(Breat Commanbere 

EDITED BY JAMES GRANT WILSON 



GENERAL WASHINGTON 



Zbc Great Commanbers Series. 


Edited by General James Grant Wilson. 


Admiral Farragut. 


By Captain A. T. Mahan, U. S. N. 


General Taylor. 


By General O. O. Howard, U. S. A. 


General Jackson. By James Parton. 


General Greene. 


By Captain Francis V. Greene, U. S. A. 


General J. E. Johnston. 


By Robert M. Hughes, of Virginia. 


General Thomas. 


By Henry Coppee, LL. D. 


General Scott. 


By General Marcus J. Wright. 


General Washington. 


By General Bradley T. Johnson. 


m PREPARATION. 


General Hancock. 


By General Francis A. Walker. 


General Sherman. 


By General Manning F. Force. 


General Grant. 


By General James Grant Wilson. 


Admiral Porter. 


By James R. Soley, late Assist. Sec. of Na\7. 


General Lee. By General Fitzhugh Lee. 


General Sheridan. 


By General Henry E. Davies. 


New York : D. Appleton & Co., x, 3, & 5 Bond Street. 



GREAT COMMANDERS 
* * * * 



GENERAL WASHINGTON 



BY 



General BRADLEY T JOHNSON 








NEW YORK 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

1894 






Copyright, 1894, 
By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. 



All rights resei~ved. 



■^ 



^ 



I DEDICATE THIS BIOGRAPHY TO MY GRANDSON, 

BRADLEY TYLER JOHNSON, Jr., 

AS A REPRESENTATIVE OF THOSE ENDLESS GENERATIONS 

WHO WILL LOVE GOD AND DUTY, 

HONOR AND LIBERTY, COUNTRY AND RIGHT, 

AND BE PROMPT TO STAKE LIFE AND FORTUNE FOR THEM, 

PERPETUATING, AND TRANSMITTING, TO THE REMOTEST TIME, 

THAT AMERICANISM, OF WHICH WASHINGTON 

WAS THE GREATEST EXEMPLAR AND ILLUSTRATION. 

B. T. J. 



PREFACE. 



When I was invited to prepare this biography 
for the Great Commanders Series the duty was ac- 
cepted with unaffected diffidence. There are about 
five hundred biographies of George Washington, 
original and translations, published in almost every 
language of modern times, as well as Greek and Latin 
versions of them. It was therefore reasonably clear 
that no new facts could be educed to throw light 
on his career or his character. This biography is 
believed to be the first attempt to consider the mili- 
tary character of Washington and to write his life as 
a soldier. There have been three distinct eras in 
Washington-olatry. 

The generation which fought the Revolution, 
framed and adopted the Constitution, and established 
the United States were impressed with the most pro- 
found veneration, the most devoted affection, the 
most absolute idolatry for the hero, sage, statesman. 
In the reaction that came in the next generation 
against " the old soldiers," who for thirty years had 
assumed all the honors and enjoyed all the fruits of 
the victory that they had won, accelerated by the 
division in American sentiment for or against the 
French Revolution, it came to be felt, as the younger 



viii GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

generation always will feel, that the achievements of 
the veterans had been greatly overrated and their 
demigod enormously exaggerated. They thought, 
as English Harry did at Agincourt, that " Old men 
forget : yet all shall be forgot, but they'll remember 
with advantages what feats they did that day." 

The fierce attacks of the Jeffersonian Democracy 
on Washington, his principles, his life, and his hab- 
its, exercised a potent influence in diminishing the 
general respect for his abilities felt by the preceding 
generation ; and Washington came to be regarded as 
a worthy, honest, well-meaning gentleman, but with 
no capacity for military and only mediocre ability 
in civil affairs. This estimate continued from the 
beginning of Jefferson's administration to the first 
of Grant's. Neither Marshall nor Irving did much 
during that period to place him in a proper historical 
light. The official and judicial statement of the 

^ case by Chief-Justice Marshall never reached the 
popular ear, and the laudatory style of Washington 
Irving did not impress the popular conviction. 

But in the last twenty-five years there has been a 
steady drift toward giving Washington his proper 
place in history and his appropriate appreciation as 
soldier and statesman. The general who never won 

'' a battle is now understood to have been the Revolu- 
tion itself, and one of the great generals of history. 

/ The statesman who never made a motion, nor devised 
a measure, nor constructed a proposition in the con- 
vention of which he was president, is appreciated as 
the spirit, the energy, the force, the wisdom which 
initiated, organized, and directed the formation of 
the Constitution of the United States and the Union 
by, through, and under it; and therefore it seems 



PREFACE. ix 

now possible to present him as the Virginian soldier, 
gentleman, and planter, as a man, the evolution of 
the society of which he formed a part, representative 
of his epoch, and his surroundings, developed by 
circumstances into the greatest character of all 
time — the first and most illustrious of Americans. 

The appreciation of Washington among other 
nations has steadily increased. General Wilson, the 
editor of this Series, in an address before the New 
York Society of the Order of the Cincinnati, at their 
annual dinner at Delmonico's, February 22, 1894, 
said: "When first a visitor to the princely estate of 
Strathfieldsaye, England, presented by the British 
Government to Wellington for a day's work at Water- 
loo, I was surprised, and also greatly gratified, to see 
a portrait of Washington, by Stuart, occupying the 
place of honor in the Duke's drawing-room. In an- 
swer to my look of inquiry, his eldest son, the second 
Duke, remarked, * It was placed there by my father, / 
who esteemed Washington as perhaps the purest 
and the noblest character of modern times — possibly 
of all time — and, considering the material of the 
armies with which he successfully met the trained 
and veteran soldiers of the Old World, fairly entitled 
to a place among the Great Captains of the eight- 
eenth century.' This opinion of Washington, enter- 
tained by the conqueror of Napoleon, has never, so 
far as I am aware, been made public before. I may 
be permitted to add, on the same authority, that when 
asked to take command of the troops ordered to 
New Orleans in 1814, the Great Duke declined to 
fight against Washington's countrymen. His broth- 
er-in-law. Sir Edward Pakenham, was therefore sent 
with Wellington's well-seasoned peninsular veterans, 



X GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

who had successfully driven the French armies from 
Spain, and fell, as all the world knows, in the most 
disastrous defeat ever sustained by a British army." 
I am indebted for constant courtesy, advice, and 
suggestion to General Wilson, Mr. Ainsworth R. 
Spofford, Librarian of the National Library, Colonel 
John Scott, and General William H. Payne, of War- 
renton, Va., whose relation to historic Virginian fam- 
ilies, and whose wide and generous culture and 
friendship have given me much pleasure and great 
assistance, and to the work of Henry Cabot Lodge, 
Senator in Congress from Massachusetts, whose 
George Washington is the most vigorous, most 
graphic, and most just account and description yet 
published of his and my subject. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. — The Washingtons of Virginia . . . . i 

II. — Fort Necessity 27 

III. — Braddock • • 35 

IV. — The Planter's Life and Marriage . . .67 
V. — The beginning of the Revolution . . .79 
VI. — The Continental Congress — New England in 

THE War 100 

VII.— War, and the Declaration of Independence . 118 

VIII. — The New York Campaign 134 

IX. — The New Jersey Campaign — The Dictator- 
ship 146 

X. — The Times that tried Men's Souls . . . 176 

XI.— The French Alliance 193 

XII. — The French Alliance again . . . .206 

XIII.— Arnold and Andre— The French again . . 218 

XIV.— The Campaign in the South . . . .239 

XV. — YoRKTOWN — Carrying the News to Congress . 256 

XVI.— Peace, and Surrender of his Commission . . 267 

XVII.— The Union and the Constitution . . .282 

Appendix 325 

Index 33i 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



FACING PAGE 

Colonel Washington, in the uniform of an officer of the 
Colonial Forces of Virginia . . . Fro7ttispiece 
(From a Portrait by Charles Wilson Peale, 1772, in the possession 
X of General G. W. C. Lee, of Lexington, Va.) 

Boston, with its Environs 109 

Battle of Trenton 151 

Battle of Brandywine 164 

Battle of Germantown 168 

Battle of Monmouth . . 200 

Route of the Allies, August-September, 1781, from the 

Hudson to Yorktown 250 

The Country from Raritan River, in East Jersey, to Elk 

Head, in Maryland 253 

Plan of the Investment and Attack of York .... 256 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE WASHINGTONS OF VIRGINIA. 

Great industry, enthusiasm, and sentiment have 
been expended in tracing the genealogy of George 
Washington, Colonel of Virginia Militia, Commander 
in Chief of the Continental Army, first President of 
the United States, and greatest of all Americans. 

Ancestor worship seems to concentrate in inten- 
sity as it ceases to be general ; and as soon as an 
individual emerges above the mass, and distinguishes 
himself by achievement in action, admirers seek to 
connect him with a distant and illustrious past, 
through ancestors who have equaled or surpassed 
their descendant in fame. 

So, as soon as the independence of the United 
States was achieved, industrious genealogists and ar- 
dent admirers, both in America and in England, set 
to work to explore all the hereditary sources from 
which the great character displayed by the leader of 
the Revolution had been derived. The pedigree of 
the Virginian Washingtons has been traced back to 
Odin, or to De Hertburn, who came into England on 
the Norman raid, and held on to a few manors, 
prize of his sword and his spear. 



2 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

These mythical genealogies are based more on 
enthusiasm than on proof, and on faith rather than 
on facts. It is a very difficult matter to connect an 
emigrant who left a certain place in England, about 
a certain year, with an immigrant of the same name 
who appeared in America some months or years 
afterward, unless there exist contemporaneous proofs 
of their identity. 

Identity of name is no proof, while it tends to 
show a probable connection. We shall therefore 
content ourselves with the facts about the Virgin- 
ian Washingtons, and discard the myths and fables. 
Within the last year evidence has been discovered 
which establishes beyond doubt who John Washing- 
ton, the emigrant to Virginia, was, from what part 
of England he came, and at what time he landed in 
Virginia. Records of Westmoreland County, lost 
ever since the Revolution of i775-'83, have lately 
been discovered, deciphered, and disclosed, which 
identify John Washington beyond a doubt. He was 
major of the militia of Westmoreland on April 4, 
1655, during the Commonwealth Government. His 
deposition, dated 1674, states that he was then forty- 
five years of age. He was therefore born in 1629, 
and in 1655, when he was commissioned major, he 
was twenty-six years old ; which proves that he was 
a gentleman of consideration and proper political 
sympathies in the Dominion of Virginia, 

He returned to England, and in 1656 was engaged 
by Mr. Edward Prescott to come over from England 
to Dunkirk (or Dantzic) and join Prescott in a trad- 
ing venture in the North Sea, and to America, Pres- 
cott supplying ship and venture, and Washington to 
act as supercargo and first mate, and to share the 



THE WASHINGTONS OF VIRGINIA. 3 

profits equally. He accepted Prescott's proposition, 
went to Dunkirk or Uantzic, Lubeck, Copenhagen, 
and Elsinore, selling tobacco, which appears to have 
been the cargo, and with the proceeds purchased 
goods for the outgoing voyage. They arrived in 
the Potomac early in 1657, and, having fallen out 
during the voyage, Washington tried to secure a 
settlement from Prescott of his share of the partner- 
ship in the trading operation. 

Prescott did not deny Washington's claim, but 
one Sunday he set sail, and took himself out of the 
reach of the law or the reclamations of his first 
mate ; whereupon the creditor began a suit by way 
of attachment in the court of Westmoreland County, 
and proceeded to take depositions to establish the 
facts, which depositions were duly recorded among 
the archives, and furnish us now the only authentic in- 
formation we have of the first Virginian Washington. 
He was a cavalier in political affinities, or he would 
not have been commissioned major in 1655 ; or he 
may not have had any pronounced sympathy with 
either side, and the Government of Virginia may 
have selected him for that reason. He returned to 
England that same year or the next, and came out 
with Prescott in 1657 and straightway married. 

In the following year he complained to the Gov- 
ernor and Council of Maryland that Edward Pres- 
cott, his quondam, fraudulent, and fugitive partner, 
had, during the voyage in the preceding year, been 
accessory to the murder of a poor old woman by 
permitting her to be tried for witchcraft. The trial 
consisted in throwing her overboard. If she floated, 
she would have been proved to be a witch ; if she 
sank, her innocence would be demonstrated. She 



4 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

naturally was drowned, and Major Washington pro- 
tested that that was an outrage not to be endured. 
What his opinion of Prescott would have been if he 
had settled fairly he does not say, but we may imagine 
he would have had a much more tolerant feeling 
about the witch trial. There has always been a 
great deal of human nature in the Washington 
blood ! The Maryland authorities, having taken the 
matter into consideration, ordered Mr. Prescott to 
attend them, and notified Major Washington to bring 
his witnesses with him to prove his charge. 

The Virginian gentleman, whose traits neither 
time nor circumstance have changed, found pleasure 
a duty, and informed the Maryland Governor and 
Council that he was just about to celebrate the bap- 
tism of his eldest child, that the day was named, " the 
gossips bid," and that he could not break such an 
engagement for a mere witch prosecution over on 
the other side of the Potomac. He said he would 
come at a more convenient and comfortable season. 
The Marylanders dismissed Mr. Prescott, and both- 
ered themselves no further about the matter. 

It is reasonable to infer that at the time when 
the constituted authorities at home under Sir Matthew 
Hale, and their co-religionists in New England, were 
denouncing the crime of witchcraft and punishing 
witches, the new government of Maryland, recently 
established under the authority of the Common- 
wealth, should have hesitated and refused to an- 
tagonize in action and sentiment the powers that 
controlled "the State of England." 

John Washington was chosen vestryman of Appo- 
mattox Parish, July 3, 1661, and was commissioned 
justice for Westmoreland, June 24, 1662. He was a 



THE WASHINGTONS OF VIRGINIA. 5 

member of the House of Burgesses for Westmore- 
land from 1666 to 1677. He was colonel command- 
ing the militia, the armed posse comitatus of West- 
moreland County, and the responsibilities and labor 
of the position were incessant and severe. 

The militia were the conservators of the peace 
and the wardens of the border. The settlements on 
the south side of the Potomac only extended a short 
distance beyond the bay, as they did also on the north 
side, for the Virginian and Marylander marched side 
by side, up the great river to the conquest of the path- 
less forest that extended from the falls of the Rap- 
pahannock and of the Potomac to the Pacific Ocean. 
The open highway of the river gave them easy means 
of constant intercourse for pleasure or for business. 

When, therefore, news came, in the summer of 
1675, that the "naked Indians were in the woods " 
and had killed a man in Stafford, the country rose. 
There was riding in hot haste from house to house 
on both sides of the river. Colonel Washington and 
Major Allerton drove the Indians from cover to 
cover, and forced them over the water. The Mary- 
landers under Major Truman closed in on them, and 
the combined forces surrounded them in a fort at 
Piscataway, on the border of Charles County, in 
Maryland, not far from the present line of the Dis- 
trict of Columbia. The Indians defended themselves / 
with vigor, until at last a parley was held, under 
which five of the principal chiefs of the Susquehan- 
nas came out to discuss terms of peace, or surren- 
der, when they were promptly put to death. 

The Indians escaped from their fort, recrossed 
into Virginia, and revenged themselves a hundred- 
fold for the loss of their leaders, for they sacked 



6 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

every homestead on the frontier from the Potomac 
to the James. They were the moving cause of 
Bacon's rebellion, when Bacon roused the house- 
holders of Virginia first to defend themselves against 
the Indians, and next to march on Jamestown and 
extort necessary reforms from Sir William Berkeley, 
the high-tempered, generous, stupid cavalier Gov- 
ernor of the dominion. 

There is some doubt about who was responsible 
for these killings. It is difficult now to get the point 
of view from which the frontiersmen and the original 
settlers regarded the Indian. He was an infidel, a 
savage, a wild beast. He had no soul. It was not 
only lawful but it was meritorious to kill him on sight, 
just as they would a panther or a rattlesnake. If 
you did not kill him, he would kill you, and therefore 
the thing to do was to strike first, and strike hardest. 
No faith was conceivable with animals, and therefore 
no truce was to be observed. The Marylanders had 
always been more punctilious about killing Indians 
— a policy impressed on them by the Jesuit in- 
fluence under which their colony had been planted. 
But it had been policy alone, not humanity, that 
directed their action. Peace was more favorable to 
the growth and security of the young colony, and 
the policy of peace would render land more easily 
acquired and draw more adventurers to St. Mary's. 
They started with the purchase of an Indian town 
from the emperor of the tribe, and they acquired by 
willing conveyance from the natives such territory 
as they required for settlement, for cultivation, for 
hunting, and for protection. 

No Indian massacre ever wiped out the infant 
settlements on tide water, on the Potomac, in blood 



THE WASHINGTONS OF VIRGINIA. 7 

and ashes, as had happened on the James ; and no 
devastating war had ever ravaged the border, and 
driven women and children back to the older settle- 
ments. Therefore the murder of the five chiefs at 
Piscataway roused the indignation of the Mary- 
landers ; and their General Assembly, acting as the 
Grand Inquest for the colony, examined into the 
circumstances and denounced the whole affair as 
brutal and barbarous. The depositions of witnesses 
are spread out in full on the records ; they state ex- 
plicitly that Colonel Washington refused to permit 
further talk, and ordered the five " to be knocked on 
the head," which was done at once. The lower 
House proposed to punish Major Truman, but the 
Governor and Council refused to assent to such 
action, and the matter was dropped. 

In Virginia it was not considered in such a seri- 
ous light. Sir William Berkeley ordered an investi- 
gation, and the depositions of the witnesses taken 
at the time under his orders are to be seen among 
the records of Westmoreland. They state distinctly 
that Colonel John Washington did not order the 
Indians to be killed, but that Major Truman took 
possession and control of them, and killed them. 
But this glimpse of the Washington nature in the 
great grandfather of George is much more vivid 
than the dim visions of De Hertburns and Wessing- 
ton, conjured up by sentimental imaginations of 
admirers and worshipers. 

The Virginian Washingtons were strong, hardy, 
manly people — hard riders, hard fighters, men of 
action, meeting and dealing with the responsibilities 
of life in a straightforward, positive, clear-headed 
way, without the least sentiment of any kind about 



8 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

the hardships of life. Life was a fact. It required 
nerve, courage, fortitude, fidelity, to meet its trials 
on the frontier, and the English in Virginia trans- 
planted the highest hereditary traits to the new con- 
ditions, and, in the environment of forest and savage, 
subdued Nature and man. They lived over again 
many of the circumstances which had developed 
nerve and muscle, for a thousand years, in struggle 
with the North Sea, and with Celt and Saxon, Goth 
and Northman. 

It has been the fashion of these latter generations 
to designate the race which settled the Atlantic 
seaboard of America under English charters as the 
Anglo-Saxon. This is a curious error, for nothing is 
more certain than that the English adventurers, from 
Raleigh down, were in the main of Norman blood. 
Compare the portraits in Lodge's Gallery of British 
Worthies — which display the leaders of thought and 
action at the time of the settlement, and they show 
a race of long-headed, lean-faced, strong cheek- 
boned men — with the portraits in Brown's Genesis of 
America, of the Americans of the Revolution, and the 
remarkable likeness at once appears. The same 
gravity, the same contour of face and head, appear 
in the era of Coke and Raleigh as in that of George 
Mason, of Gunston, and George Washington, of 
Mount Vernon ; and a visitor to any of the courts of 
the old counties of Virginia will see to-day on court 
day the same grave deportment, the same reserved 
carriage, the same courteous intercourse, as was ex- 
hibited by their ancestors of six generations ago ; 
and the characteristics, physical and moral, of person 
and manners were and are Norman, and not Saxon. 

The British race that has been created by the 



THE WASHINGTONS OF VIRGINIA. 9 

Union there, by trade, by industrialism, has become 
more and more Saxon in its characteristics ; but the 
people who settled Virginia, and have held it ever 
since, are the best specimens who now exist of the 
breed who roved the Spanish main under Hawkins 
and Blake, who with Raleigh sought El Dorado, and 
under Captain John Smith explored the Chesapeake, 
or who fought the Grand Armada under Lord How- 
ard, of Effingham, and won for mankind the freedom 
of the seas. 

The Washingtons, like their neighbors, addressed 
themselves to the duties of life with severe sim- 
plicity. The immigrant soon after his arrival mar- 
ried Anne Pope, daughter of Colonel Nathanael 
Pope; was a thrifty, energetic, public-spirited man; 
was colonel of the militia, vestryman of his parish, 
member of the House of Burgesses. Land then 
could be had for the asking, and it only required the 
courage and energy to examine it to select and 
locate the best. Before his death, in 1677, John 
Washington acquired large possessions and numer- 
ous servants, with horses and horned cattle and 
swine, and all the wealth of a new country. By Anne 
Pope he had Lawrence, John, and Anne Washington. 
His son Lawrence married Mildred Warner, by whom 
he had John, Augustine, and Mildred W^ashington. 
Augustine (pronounced Austin) Washington first 
married Jane Butler, who died in 1728, leaving two 
sons, Lawrence and Augustine. Augustine then mar- 
ried Mary Ball, of a well-known and established 
Westmoreland family. 

The Balls were people of position and comfort- 
able fortune, and Mary Ball's education was such as 
was appropriate to her station in life and to the 



10 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

times in which she lived. Her father, whose estate 
was Epping Forest, engaged a tutor for his young 
family of boys and girls, who under his instruction 
acquired the arts of reading, writing, and ciphering. 
In the daily intercourse with their own family, and 
with their neighbors, they learned to love God and 
honor the king, to speak the truth, and be respectful 
to their betters and seniors, rendering to their parents 
affection and respect absolutely without limit. 

In due time Mary Ball was introduced to the 
vice-regal court at Williamsburgh, where she ob- 
served and was instructed in and imitated the " mode " 
of the great world, and learned how to enter a room 
and how to leave it, how to make her courtesy, and 
how to manage her train and her fan. She made an 
impression on society as a beauty, as contemporary 
letters show, and after her " fling " of a season she 
returned, happy and contented, to her country home 
to take up her life as the wife of some honest Vir- 
ginian colonel, to become the mother of his children 
and the manager of his servants, his estates, and of 
himself, as has always been the custom there, and 
to live serene, happy, and contented in that state 
of life into which it should please God to call her. 
Fulfilling her destiny, she married the widower 
Augustine Washington with his two sons, and bore 
him four sons and two daughters. 

The eldest, George, was born at Bridge's Creek, in 
Westmoreland, on February ii, O. S., 1732 ; February 
22, N. S. Three years after this event the house 
was burned, and Augustine Washington moved his 
family to another house and plantation in Stafford, 
on the north side of the Rappahannock, opposite the 
village of Fredericksburg. Here he died, in 1743, 



THE WASHINGTONS OF VIRGINIA. n 

leaving a large landed estate, stocked with servants 
and cattle, and this large family to the care of the 
young widow. 

Much effusion has been expended over the won- 
derful traits of " Mary, the mother of Washington " ; 
and her sagacity, her influence in forming character, 
her example in the way of method, order, and fru- 
gality, have been greatly exploited as having exerted 
a prodigious influence on the career of her illustri- 
ous son. But it is fair to say that Mary Washington 
was only a fair example of hundreds of Virginian 
widows, who, before and since her time, deprived of 
the support of a husband, have deliberately, seri- 
ously, and voluntarily dedicated their lives to the 
training of their children, and the preservation of 
their estates, committed to them by the devotion, the 
respect, and the intelligence of the father and hus- 
band who had gone. Such instances of self-sacrifice 
are usual in that society, and the example forms 
strong characters, brave and good men and women. 
Mary Washington was left in charge of several plan- 
tations, many servants, the two stepsons, Lawrence 
and Augustine, and her own children, George, 
Samuel, John Augustine, Charles, and Betty ; another 
daughter, Mildred, having died in infancy. 

Augustine Washington, after his marriage, had 
paid a visit to England with his wife, which has led 
to a tradition that his eldest son George was born 
near London. But it is certain that he was born in 
Westmoreland County, Virginia. By the will of 
Augustine his large landed estate was equitably di- 
vided between his children of the first and second 
marriage alike. To Lawrence he left the estate on 
Hunting Creek, in Fairfax County — afterward named, 



12 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

by Lawrence, Mount Vernon, in honor of his old com- 
mander, Admiral Vernon — and to George the place 
on the Rappahannock. Mrs. Washington was made 
guardian of her own children, with control and man- 
agement of their property until they became of age. 
She purchased a small one-story, three-roomed house 
in Fredericksburg, and moved from the plantation 
into the town. But she managed all her affairs her- 
self ; she did precisely what every lady in her station 
did then in that society, and does now. 

Mrs. Washington had a large family of children, 
for her servants were her children, next to her real 
children. She watched them, guided them, controlled 
them, trained them in manners and in morals, in 
ideas and in faith, day and night, morning and 
evening. In due season the geese were to be 
plucked to provide for pillows and beds, the hens 
and turkeys to be set, the sheep to be sheared, the 
wool to be washed, carded, spun, and woven, the 
hides to be saved and tanned, the winter shoes to be 
made and socks to be knit, and clothes to be issued ; 
and with this, the daily care of the plantation and the 
house, the weighing out of the *' allowance " to each 
family, the examination as to the cleanliness of the per- 
sons and the houses of the " family." This was part 
of the domestic police, and every part and detail 
was executed under the direct eye of the mistress. 
In the garden and on the plantation the same method 
of personal superintendence was applied. The head 
gardener and the overseer every morning came to 
" the house " for " orders," and the mistress gave mi- 
nute directions as to everythmg that was to be done 
by them during the day. And after the details of 
domestic housekeeping were through in the morning, 



THE WASHINGTONS OF VIRGINIA. 



13 



she would make a tour of inspection over the garden, 
and then mount a one-horse stick gig and cross the 
Rappahannock by the ferry, and see everything on 
the plantation. Such a life requires energy, intelli- 
gence, perseverance ; it begets methods of order, 
frugality, and exactness ; and with the constant ex- 
ample before his eyes, at home and everywhere he 
went, among his relations and friends, the boy Wash- 
ington must have acquired habits which accompanied 
and controlled him all his life. 

There were no schools, but Mrs. Washington 
understood perfectly the value of education to a 
young gentleman. Many young men of the neigh- 
borhood, her own brother Joseph Ball among them, 
had been sent " home " for education. Oxford was 
full of Virginians ; Fitzhugh, Robinson, Randolph, 
Burwell, Wormly, and many others were represented 
there, and at the University of Edinburgh. It was 
impossible, with the limited means of the Washing- 
tons, to send them home for education. Lawrence 
Washington had been sent home by his father for 
that purpose, and that was as much as was reason- 
able ; the rest of the boys had to take their chances. 
So George was put in charge of William Hobby, an old 
fellow of the neighborhood, sexton and school-teacher. 

It does not at all follow that because Hobby was 
a sexton that he might not also have been an M. A. 
of Oxford, or a gentleman by birth. After the rising 
of 1745 in England the adherents of the Stuarts 
were exported by the hundred to Virginia and sold 
at public vendue. A groom of the chambers, or a 
maid of honor, would get at court a grant of fifty or 
a hundred prisoners, captured by the Duke of Cum- 
berland, and crammed into the jails of the northern 



14 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



counties, where typhus and smallpox destroyed them 
by the score; and gifts of prisoners were negotiable 
property, a kind of sight draft directed to any jailer 
or sheriff in the kingdom, and were sold at a market 
price. So old Hobby may have been a gentleman 
although he was a sexton, and may have been a uni- 
versity man though he did keep an old field school. 
Hobby taught the three Rs, and George learned to 
write a good, legible hand, which must have been 
learned at that time, and which was not taught by 
an illiterate man. 

When George was seven or eight years old, Law- 
rence returned from England a well-set-up, educated 
gentleman, and one of the finest traits of his char- 
acter was the affection and interest he at once took 
in the little stepbrother. He felt what a difference 
there would be between his life and that of the un- 
kempt country lad who followed him around with 
admiring eyes and affectionate docility. Big brother 
Lawrence was the hero of George's youth. Law- 
rence, with many young Virginians of quality, volun- 
teered for the expedition under Admiral Vernon 
against the hated Papist and Spaniard in the West 
Indies, and was present and helped at the capture of 
Carthagena. In due time Lawrence returned with 
the approbation of his commanding officer and the 
applause of his comrades, and the boy followed him 
around, fearful to lose one word of the wonderful 
story of hairbreadth escapes by flood and field. As 
the boy grew older he needed better instruction and 
training than Hobby could give him, and he was sent 
to his half-brother Augustine's, on Bridge Creek, in 
Westmoreland, to get the advantage of a neighbor- 
hood school kept by Thomas Williams. 



THE WASHINGTONS OF VIRGINIA. 



15 



When George was thirteen years of age, he did 
the things and developed the traits usual in a Vir- 
ginia country boy of his age and period. A lad in 
that society rides a horse from the time he is five 
years old, and has a horse of his own, which he uses 
at his pleasure. He catches him at pasture, saddles 
and bridles him, and rides him everywhere — to the 
neighbors, on an errand for his mother, to borrow 
some sugar, for his father, to take back a bridle, to 
church on Sunday, to school on week days. By the 
time a boy is thirteen his horse becomes part of him- 
self as much as his clothes, and he would as readily 
appear in public without one as without the other. 
In the country, boys find amusement and pleasure in 
the expenditure of the energy of youth and health. 
They run races, they wrestle, and they fight. In the 
society in which Washington was born, like the Eng- 
lish society in the preceding century, of which it was 
a type, it was considered natural, proper, and healthy 
for boys to fight. 

Quarrels were discountenanced, but mothers 
taught their sons that, if ever a falling out occurred 
between comrades, the best thing to do was to strip 
off their jackets and settle it — fight it out, and settle 
it, not quarrel over it. At a school where every boy's 
father had been shot at by or had shot an Indian, the 
athletic sports most affected would naturally be of a 
military cast. George, like every other healthy boy, 
had been playing soldier and drilling the little negroes 
on the plantation, and about the house, ever since 
he had donned boy's clothes ; and at the W^illiams 
school a boy who had a brother who wore a scarlet 
coat and bore the King's commission, and who had 
heard from that brother glowing accounts of real 



l6 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

war under Admiral Vernon and General Wentworth 
against the Spaniards, was of necessity a leader, es- 
pecially when that boy was well grown, muscular 
and strong, and quite prompt to enforce respect by 
a remarkably stalwart and ready right arm. 

Lawrence Washington had married Anne Fairfax, 
the daughter of William Fairfax, of Belvoir, the cousin 
of Lord Fairfax, and was living on his estate of 
Mount Vernon in comfort, without ostentation, and 
plenty, without extravagance. He felt the inequality 
in social conditions between himself and his young 
stepbrother, and appreciated the immense advan- 
tage that social culture and elegant society gives a 
man in the world, and he made a point of having 
him at Mount Vernon as much as possible. There 
he was introduced at Belvoir, and a well-grown, 
handsome lad of fourteen is much more of a man 
in primitive societies than in older ones, where con- 
ventionalities thrust the young into the background. 
So young Washmgton was a favorite among the 
Virginian English society of the Northern Neck. 

It has been represented that that society lived in 
semisavage profusion and pomp, surrounded by troops 
of slaves ; that the planter lived in a house where 
the glass in the windows was often broken, though 
the sideboard groaned beneath the remnant of the 
plate, the rest of which had been melted down for the 
King, at home ; that there were holes in the damask 
curtains, though the walls were decorated with Lely's 
masterpieces, portraits of ancestresses brought from 
home ; that the women were ignorant, and the men 
were boorish examples of the day and manners of 
Squire Western. These views are as erroneous as 
this picture is false. 



THE WASHINGTONS OF VIRGINIA. 



17 



No Virginian ever spoke of " slaves," By a cu- 
rious, unconscious cerebration, the word was dis- 
tasteful to a people who valued liberty as their most 
precious possession, and the retainers of the family 
were called '* servants." They were as much the 
family as the children, or the wife, or the mother. 
The relation of master and servant was not a prop- 
erty relation at all. It was the domestic institution as 
it had always existed in every primitive society, as it 
had been practiced by the patriarchs, and recognized 
and regulated by Moses and the prophets. A man's 
"wife, his manservant, and his maidservant," were 
placed in the same category in the decalogue, and it 
was the Virginians who prevented the appearance of 
the word " slaves " in the Constitution of the United 
States, where reference is made to the servile class of 
the population as ''persons held to labor" and as 
"other persons." 

" Slave " was a word tabooed in the language of 
ladies and gentlemen; it was vulgar ; it was " com- 
mon," to use the vernacular. It was not until the 
invention of the cotton gin led to a great develop- 
ment in the cotton-producing States that " servants " 
began to be " slaves," and to be considered on ac- 
count of their mercantile value, and the consequent 
sectional jealousy which viewed with alarm the 
growth of the Southern section which threatened to 
transfer the power from east of the Hudson, that 
" slave " began to be a word in the common vocabu- 
lary, used on the one side as a taunt, on the other as 
a defiance. And there was no barbaric extravagance 
or savage profusion. The planter's estate fur- 
nished everything the family consumed except 
sugar and coffee ; tea was practically unknown. 



1 8 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

Bear, venison, wild turkeys, pheasants, partridges 
abounded in the woods; ducks and swans, oysters of 
the finest, and fish of every variety crowded the 
rivers and bays, and a huntsman and fisherman, de- 
tailed for the sole duty of stocking the larder, kept 
every household fully supplied. Beef, mutton, bacon, 
and hams were provided also, while the fields pro- 
duced wheat and corn, from which bread of unrivaled 
excellence was made; nor were the manners most in 
vogue those of Squire Western. 

The heir of every family was educated at home, 
and read his terms at Oxford. At the University 
of Edinburgh there was a Club, requisite to the mem- 
bership of which was the fact that the applicant must 
have been born in Virginia. Within a day's ride 
of Mount Vernon were a dozen country houses the 
masters of which were university graduates and had 
made the grand tour — the Fitzhughs at Eagle's Nest 
and at Marmion, the Masons at Gunston Kail, the 
Lees at Stratford, the Carters at Sabine Hall, the 
Fauntleroys in Richmond. 

All along the Potomac and the Rappahannock 
were large roomy, pretentious homes, some of which 
were on English models from Italian architects, the 
great majority simple and plain mansions, in which 
gathered and circulated a refined, elevated, traveled 
society. Colonel Lewis Littlepage, of New Castle, 
had been the chamberlain of the last King of Poland. 
Colonel John Parke had been aid-de-camp to the 
Duke of Marlborough at Blenheim, and had carried 
the dispatch of victory to Queen Anne, and received 
from her fair hand, for reward, her miniature set in 
brilliants. 

Colonel William Byrd, of Westover, had been the 



THE WASHINGTONS OF VIRGINIA. 



19 



intimate friend and was the constant correspondent 
of the Earl of Orrery, the inventor of the astronom- 
ical instrument which bears his name. Lord Fair- 
fax had been one of the bucks of the court, the com- 
panion of Addison and Dick Steele, and had con- 
tributed to the Spectator. 

As was and is the Virginia custom, the families 
of wealth in the Dominion were closely bound by 
frequent intermarriages, by ties of blood and friend- 
ship, and they constituted one large circle. One 
household would move over to another with servants, 
children, carriages, horses, and dogs, and, after a 
stay of two or three weeks, all would move to a 
third, and so go on accumulating as they went, until 
it became time for all to go home to arrange for the 
coming year. But home was the last place the Vir- 
ginian wanted to go unless he was accompanied by 
a house full of cousins. This constant social inter- 
course, free but reserved, cordial but dignified, pro- 
duced a type of manners of the highest grade ; and 
the characteristics of Washington, which for these hun- 
dred years have been descanted upon as of phenom- 
enal ceremony and extraordinary dignity, were the 
ways and manners of his class, with whom he passed 
his earlier years. He was an exemplar of the culture 
of his society, and in no remarkable way different 
from the gentlemen of his station in life all around 
him. He was a typical Virginian of his epoch. 

At this time the experience of Lawrence prompted 
George to desire a commission as midshipman in the 
British navy ; but Uncle Joseph Ball, who had 
studied law in London and who was settled there 
as a practicing attorney, discountenanced the idea 
with the stolid obstinacy of the middle-class English- 
3 



20 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

man, whose only idea of the naval service was de- 
rived from the press gang, and who thought it un- 
becoming for his provincial nephew to aspire to the 
position of a gentleman and to bear the King's com- 
mission. The instruction of Williams's school had 
imparted sufficient skill to make young Washington 
a competent surveyor. There are plats of surveys 
now in the General Land Office of Virginia made by 
him which would do credit to any youth of his age 
at the present day. Lord Fairfax had acquired all 
the land lying between the Potomac and the Rappa- 
hannock Rivers, and a right line drawn from the 
principal source of the one to the head of the other. 
This great principality was unexplored save by the 
trapper and hunter. Across it ran the great war 
trail of the Five Nations, passing northeast and south- 
west. In the spring of 1748, when young Washing- 
ton had just passed his sixteenth birthday, Lord Fair- 
fax employed him as surveyor to explore and locate 
his lands beyond the Blue Ridge, up to the principal 
source of the Potomac, his compensation being fixed 
at a doubloon a day, with the possibility of increas- 
ing it to six pistoles. 

In March, he and George Fairfax rode over the 
mountain by Ashby's Gap and through the lovely 
valley of Virginia as far as the mouth of Wills Creek, 
on the Potomac, and on their return, in April, Lord 
Fairfax was so much pleased at their report of the 
country, that he moved over to a new settlement, in 
what is now the County of Clarke, and established a 
hunting lodge which he named Greenway Court. The 
ensuing three years were passed in the woods in this 
employment as surveyor. His earnings, which were 
very large compared with the price of land — one 



THE WASHINGTONS OF VIRGINIA. 2 1 

day's wages sufficed to pay for many acres — were in- 
vested in land, the location of which to this day 
attests his admirable judgment. Probably this ex- 
perience as a surveyor was the most valuable epoch 
of his life. He was taught self-control, alertness, 
quick decision, prompt action. Living in the woods, 
where a man's life is guarded alone by himself, teaches 
him to be on guard at all times, by day and by night ; 
and in such a life every man's tomahawk was loose, 
every man's rifle was unslung, his bullet pouch was 
pulled around so as to be handy, and never for a 
moment was the guard relaxed. A watch was set 
every night, and on the march by day an advance 
scout was sent out, and a wary lookout kept up. 

This life under the open sky, when a man carries 
his life in his hand, and a keen eye and sharp ear and 
quick hand are his surest safeguard, develops a self- 
possession, an endurance, a patience, and a persever- 
ance unknown in other states of society. One who 
spends days in the forest, without exchanging an un- 
necessary word with a comrade, becomes a taciturn 
man; whose life every minute is only protected by 
himself, becomes of necessity self-reliant ; whose time 
is passed in the solitude of Nature, absorbs the gravity 
of the woods and the mountains. In such a school 
George Washington passed the ensuing three years 
of his life. 

Returning from his surveying expedition in the 
valley. Lord Fairfax procured him the appointment 
of public surveyor, which insured him steady em- 
ployment, and gave his work the stamp of official 
authority. While thus employed, he enjoyed the 
benefit of the cultivated society assembled by Lord 
Fairfax at Greenway Court. There he found a library 



22 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

of English books, and read the Spectator and the 
History of England, the only opportunity which he 
had had up to that time to read books. His educa- 
tion had been by action and by living, by observa- 
tion of Nature and men, and thoughtfulness and 
analysis of what he had observed. 

In September, 1751, Lawrence went to Barbadoes 
for his health, taking his young brother with him, and 
returned the following spring. He died in July, 
1752, leaving his whole estate to his infant daughter, 
with the remainder, in case she died without issue, to 
his brother George, with the latter as guardian of the 
infant and executor of the will. This produced an 
entire change in the prospects and position of the 
young surveyor. His self-denial in working and in 
saving his earnings, and his judgment in investing 
them in well-selected and well-located lands during 
his experience as a surveyor, had made him a large 
holder of wild land along the Potomac and the 
Shenandoah. Lawrence Washington was a man of 
large views and forcible character. 

The struggle that had been going on between 
England and France in Europe for centuries had 
been extended to the New World. The French 
settled Canada and held the Great Lakes and their 
outlet to the sea. The English planted colonies 
along the Atlantic seaboard, and began feeling out 
beyond the mountains toward the vast, unexplored 
wilderness which stretched in unbroken solitude 
toward the setting sun. 

The French acquired the mouth of the Missis- 
sippi, and explored what they believed to be its 
source in Minnesota. They established communica- 
tions between their northern and southern posts; 



THE WASHINGTONS OF VIRGINIA. 



23 



they navigated the Great Lakes; they pushed up 
the Ohio ; and they were overrunning the country 
on the right bank of that river. If they were suc- 
cessful, Protestant Virginia would be walled in by 
the Blue Mountains, held by Catholic France, and 
confined to the narrow seaboard. 

The English of Virginia, like their race every- 
where, pushed their trade before them and followed it 
with their flag. They organized the Ohio Company, 
with men and means to settle the disputed territory, 
and made Lawrence Washington their general man- 
ager. No man could live on the frontier with the 
threat of Indian massacre ever present to him, and 
the Indian backed by the Frenchman ; no man whose 
ancestor had fought under English Harry at Agin- 
court but must have felt that the question of Eng- 
lish or French supremacy in America must eventually 
be decided by arms. Four generations of Virginian 
Englishmen had been fighting the brutes set on them 
by the French. No man could remember the time 
when the tale of Indian horrors had not been told by 
mother and grandmother around the fire, with bated 
breath, to the children. 

Lawrence Washington, like most of the young 
Virginian gentlemen of his day, had seen service. 
He procured for his brother, aged nineteen, the posi- 
tion of assistant adjutant general for the Northern 
District of Virginia with the rank of major, and pro- 
vided as instructors for him Adjutant Bataille Muse, 
a Virginian, who probably had served in the Low 
Countries, as many young Virginian gentlemen of the 
day did, and Jacob Van Braam, an old Dutch soldier, 
whom Lawrence Washington had picked up on the 
Carthagena expedition. 



24 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

He was determined that his younger brother 
should be equipped for that stage of life to which it 
should please God to call him; just as our genera- 
tion has seen young men prepared by military educa- 
tion, training, and discipline, for the trials that were 
to come to them. 

Lawrence Washington's death, George Washing- 
ton's reputation and experience as surveyor, his 
thrift and intelligence in the acquisition of wild 
land, his executorship and guardianship of the heir- 
ess of Mount Vernon, and his residence there, all 
gave him weight and consideration in the communi- 
ty ; and when the Lieutenant Governor of Virgina — 
a choleric Scotchman, Dinwiddle — required a man to 
warn off the French trespassers from that part of 
Virginia which extended northwest of the Ohio, the 
master of Mount Vernon was pre-eminently the fittest 
man for the work. 

A former envoy of the Governor had been 
stopped by Indian threats — instigated by French 
craft — far short of the French posts, and had turned 
back utterly unsuccessful. The service needed a 
man of varied qualities and acquirements; a man of 
will and' force; a woodsman, for he would be re- 
quired to meet and overcome many obstacles from 
man and Nature, and to face the perils of the wild 
woods which stretched unbroken from the Shenan- 
doah to the Rockies and to Lake Michigan ; a gen- 
tleman of culture and information, for he must meet, 
on equal terms, men trained at the Court of Ver- 
sailles. What was the utility of sending a messenger 
hundreds of miles through the wilderness, in hourly 
peril of life, to warn subordinates from obeying the 
orders of their superiors, and carrying out a well- 



THE WASHINGTONS OF VIRGINIA. 25 

considered, matured, and determined national policy, 
passes our comprehension. Accordmg to our mod- 
ern lights, it seems a useless ceremonial that could 
lead to no possible useful result; but, accordmg to 
the standard of the day, the way of doing a thing 
was quite as important as the doing of it. The cere- 
monial was an important part of the transaction. 

Adjutant Washington then was selected by the 
Governor of Virginia for this delicate and danger- 
ous mission. In October, 1753, he assembled a small 
party at the mouth of Wills Creek, on the Potomac, 
and pushed out toward the Ohio with Christopher 
Gist, an experienced woodsman and Indian fighter, 
as guide. His place of departure is the present city 
of Cumberland, in Maryland, named from the Duke 
of Cumberland. A great council of the Ohio In- 
dians and the Iroquois had been called to meet at 
Logstown, an Indian town on the Ohio a few miles 
below the site of the present city of Pittsburg. 
Here the Virginian envoy met the chiefs in council, 
and, having induced them to enter into amicable 
relations with the English, pushed on to the French 
post farther west, near Lake Erie. There he deliv- 
ered his message with great punctilio, and much 
ceremony, and was bowed out with courtly grace 
and diplomatic phrases, and sent back with the po- 
lite intimation that if the Virginians would mind 
their own business it would be better for them. 

Winter was on them before they turned home- 
ward. There would be no grass for the horses, and 
the tracks of the animals would mark too clear a 
trail on the backward march ; so Gist and the ma- 
jor left their horses, and took to the woods on foot. 
Snow and ice encumbered their march, and through 



26 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

perils of flood, and starvation, and of Indians, they 
successfully pushed their way. When the country is 
considered — the pathless forest, the flooded rivers, 
the ice on the mountain, the snow in the valley — this 
journey shows fortitude, perseverance, and prompt- 
ness extraordinary. 

Leaving Venango, the French post, on Christ- 
mas day, Washington and his comrade marched up 
the Alleghany to the confluence of the Mononga- 
helaand the Alleghany — the present Pittsburg; then 
up the Monongahela and across the mountain to 
Wills Creek ; thence down the Potomac to Mount 
Vernon ; thence across the Rappahannock, the Pa- 
munkey, and the Mattapony, to Williamsburgh, 
where they arrived on January i6th, just twenty-one 
days from the start. It would push two good men, 
and two horses, to cover the same ground now in the 
same time, over modern roads and with modern inns. 
The whole expedition was justly esteemed as an 
extraordinary exhibition of courage, sagacity, and 
skill. Washington had kept a careful and minute 
journal, which he submitted as his oflicial report to 
the Governor, and which was published. It fixed the 
attention of the province upon the major command- 
ing the Department of Northern Virginia, and thence- 
forward he was the hope and pride of all Virginia, 
trusted in trial, and her stay in the storm soon to 
burst. 



CHAPTER II. 

FORT NECESSITY. 

In recognition of his service on the expedition 
to the Ohio, Major Washington was promoted lieu- 
tenant colonel of a Virginia regiment, Fry being 
colonel, to be posted at Winchester, at the foot of 
the great valley of Virginia, and right across the 
great trail by which the Northern Indians had been 
used from time immemorial to communicate with 
the great nations which held the mountain ranges 
and valleys of the Carolinas, Georgia, and Tennes- 
see. It was the highway of the Iroquois or Six Na- 
tions and the Cherokees. 

It was plain to the Virginian intellect— English 
and Protestant as it was— that the Jesuits were 
scheming, and putting forward the Indians to exter- 
minate the settlements of the Church established by 
Henry VIII, where traditions of Poictiers, and Cressy, 
and Agincourt stimulated confidence in themselves 
and contempt for Frenchmen, and hatred of the Pope 
and all his works. The old struggle between the lily 
and the rose was to be tried over again, and no Virgin- 
ian gentleman doubted his duty, or the result. Dinwid- 
dle, the Lieutenant Governor, was a narrow and big- 
oted Scotchman, greatly impressed with a sense of the 
dignity of his office, and of the inferiority of provin- 
cials to the home-born British subject. His Majesty's 



28 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

commission, in his opinion, conferred a patent of su- 
periority which brought with it wisdom and infalli- 
bility. The wrangle between the House of Burgesses, 
elected by the gentry of Virginia, and the Governor, 
appointed by a cabinet ignorant of the environment 
or the development or of the feelings of the provm- 
cials, of necessity impaired their efficient support of 
the defense of Virginia. But the determination to 
protect her ancient borders from encroachment was 
absolutely unalterable. 

The tradition of the spoliation of Virginia, by the 
Penn and Calvert grants, was fresh in every one's 
mind, but while they proposed to be loyal to his 
Majesty, and yield obedience to his orders in council, 
they would in no wise suffer aliens in race and re- 
ligion, with whom their ancestors had waged war for 
twenty generations, to extend their hold on the Con- 
tinent, or to trespass on the ancient borders of the 
Old Dominion. Therefore this regiment, under Fry 
and Washington, was posted on outposts to break 
communication between the North and South, and to 
keep watch over the movements of the hereditary 
enemy on the Ohio. 

The mouth of Wills Creek, on the Potomac, in 
Maryland, was the head of flatboat and canoe navi- 
gation, and the nearest point to the French posts. 
It was selected as a depot by Governor Sharpe, 
of Maryland, where he collected some stores, and 
whence was sent out by the combined authority of 
the Governors of Maryland and Virginia an expe- 
dition to seize the point at the confluence of the 
Alleghany and the Monongahela, where their union 
makes the Ohio — a position Major Washington had 
selected and reported as the proper place for an 



FORT NECESSITY. 



29 



advanced post against the French on the lakes. 
Captain Trent was pushed out to establish a post at 
the confluence of the two rivers. With the usual 
alertness of incompetency, Captain Trent differed 
from the judgment of Major Washington, and de- 
cided that a point below the junction was the best 
place for a fort, and set his men to work there with 
spade and pickaxe, and, mounting his horse, pushed 
back to the post at Wills Creek. 

It was hard living and hard sleeping on the Ohio. 
Mere dying had no particular interest for the pio- 
neer race ; that all came in the way of business, 
and no one took any special pains to avoid it. It 
was like a mountain road — you might get through, 
and you might not ; you tried it all the same. 

The appearance of the Virginians, their digging 
of dirt, their cutting down of trees, their sharpen- 
ing of stakes, all flew through the forest, in the 
spring breeze, and Captain Contrecoeur, a bright 
young Frenchman, at the nearest post, took upon 
himself to investigate them and to verify them. 

So down the Alleghany he started with a thou- 
sand Frenchmen and Indians, in bateaux and ca- 
noes, and incontinently stopped the intrenching 
operations of the Virginians. Captain Trent was 
away. Lieutenant Frazier, his second in command, 
was at his home, ten miles distant — a matter entirely 
within his right, for he had entered the service and 
assumed the responsibility of command at the fort 
on the express understanding that he was to be per- 
mitted to remain at his own home, and only visit the 
fort weekly, or as often as he thought necessary. 
The Frenchman marched the Virginians out of the 
work with scant ceremony, and permitted them to 



30 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



depart with their intrenching tools, on their promise 
not to come near the Ohio again for a year. 

On the 2d of April Colonel Washington set out 
from Alexandria, with two companies of the new 
regiment, for the outpost on the Ohio. His supplies 
and baggage were pushed and hauled up the Potomac 
to the mouth of Wills Creek in bateaux and canoes. 
His whole force consisted of about one hundred and 
fifty men ; but on arriving at Wills Creek, where 
Captain Trent was to have collected pack horses for 
him, he found Trent a fugitive — no pack horses, and 
no outpost on the Ohio.- He decided to move out 
as far as possible and occupy the best position prac- 
ticable, and therefore pushed into the wilderness be- 
yond Cumberland, or Wills Creek, through the moun- 
tain defiles, over the mountain ranges, and through 
the forest with about three hundred men. Progress 
was necessarily slow, where a way for wheels had to 
be cut along the mountain side and a road cleared 
through the heavy timber. 

In ten days they had not advanced more than 
twenty miles, to the Little Meadows. Notwithstand- 
ing the difficulties of the country, he marched forty 
or fifty miles farther north, to the falls of the You- 
ghiogheny. There he heard that the French were 
coming, and had crossed the ford of the river eight- 
een miles off. He had only three hundred men, 
Virginian frontiersmen, and fighting men to be sure, 
but it was utter recklessness that pushed such a 
force out in the wilderness nearly a hundred miles 
from re-enforcement or support. Three hundred Vir- 
ginians could march and fight their way from Win- 
chester or Staunton to Lake Erie or Lake Michigan 
against Indians only, but nothing but the self-confi- 



FORT NECESSITY. 



31 



dence of Englishmen could explain why an inexperi- 
enced young soldier would undertake to penetrate a 
wilderness with a mere handful of men, in the face of 
the unknown force of Frenchmen, then the first sol- 
diers of the age. 

When, however, he learned that eight hundred 
French were marching on him, and only eighteen 
miles off, he promptly selected a position for a fight. 
At the Great Meadows he started to construct a fort. 
The locality was bad; it was too far out from his 
supports. The topography was worse. General 
Sharpe, of Maryland, a soldier of experience, of 
courage, and sense, criticised the whole performance 
with remorseless severity. ^* Fort Necessity," says 
Sharpe, " was a little, useless intrenchment in a val- 
ley between two eminences." It was, in fact, a 
meadow of no great area, surrounded by low hills 
covered with heavy timber. While he was at work 
at his ''fort " news came that a hostile party was in 
his neighborhood, and his Indian ally— the Half King 
of the Senecas — wanted his assistance to atack it. 

Washington started at once, with forty men, to 
find the enemy, surprised him in camp, and killed and 
captured Jumonville and the entire party save one, 
who escaped. This was Colonel Washington's first 
experience of the singing of a hostile bullet, and, 
being a healthy, strong young Virginian, it is reason- 
able to believe that he enjoyed it. His ancestors in 
Virginia for three generations had been fighting In- 
dians, as in England for ten they had been fighting 
Frenchmen, and this combined operation of killing 
both Frenchmen and Indians must have been a rea- 
sonable, commendable, and agreeable performance 
of duty and pleasure. 



22 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

Contrecoeur, with his French troops, pushed rap- 
idly on him, to avenge the insult in the capture of 
his advance party, and the death of Jumonville, its 
commanding officer. He closed the Virginians up in 
Fort Necessity and took possession of the wooded 
heights surrounding it. Some nonsense has been 
written about Colonel Washington's gallantry in of- 
fering battle to his adversary outside of his trenches. 
Now, Washington, though reckless and overconfi- 
dent in this first experience, has never been suspected 
of an utter lack of sense. In war it is business to 
kill as many of the other side as you can and have 
as few of your own people killed as possible; so 
you use every advantage to save your men and to de- 
stroy the others; and the idea of abandoning shel- 
ter, and offering with three hundred men to fight 
eight hundred "in the open," never did occur to 
any one but an idiot or a lunatic. Therefore Wash- 
ington must be acquitted of the charge of offer- 
ing to fight the French " in the open " at Fort 
Necessity. 

The truth is, he and his Virginians stuck to their 
earthworks, and their ditch, and their stockade, as 
closely as bark to the trees; but the Frenchmen sur- 
rounded them, shelteredthemselvesbehind trees, and 
fired over the walls of Fort Necessity into the un- 
covered troops there, with perfect security and com- 
fort to themselves. This continued the whole day, 
in a drizzling rain. The Virginian loss was severe. 
Twelve had been killed and forty-three wounded ; so 
when the French drums beat a parley at dark, the 
Virginian colonel was glad to treat for terms. His 
position was utterly untenable, and it was only a 
question of time when his entire force would be shot 



FORT NECESSITY 



33 



down, and it was his duty to save his men for future 
use of the State. 

No one among the Virginians could speak or 
read French. Old Jacob Van Braam, the Dutchman 
who had been pretending to teach Washington fenc- 
ing and the sword exercise at Mount Vernon, had 
been commissioned major, and was present with the 
command. He was sent out to see the Frenchmen, 
and returned with several offers of terms, all of 
which were rejected by Colonel Washington. At 
last, late at night, Major Van Braam brought m 
terms of capitulation written in French. He trans- 
lated them to the council of Virginian officers. Ac- 
cording to his translation, they agreed to honorable 
terms of surrender; the defeated party should march 
out of their fort with drums beating and colors fly- 
ing, should salute their flag, and carry off all their 
arms, military stores, and effects, except artillery, 
which they were to destroy. They pledged them- 
selves not to erect buildings or to occupy land, or 
to approach near the Ohio for twelve months. 

But the articles of capitulation also referred to 
the assassmation of De Jumonville, and Washington 
was thus made to admit that he had murdered a 
French officer. This phrase Van Braam translated 
as "the death of De Jumonville," and thus its sig- 
nificance and intention escaped the Virginians. The 
terms of capitulation gave great offense in some of 
the colonies, and were sharply criticised at home. 

Governor Sharpe wrote that "everybody was 
talking of the urunilitaij conduct of Colonel Wash- 
ington," and Horace Walpole said that the French 
had clipped the wings of that gay " fanfaron," 
Major Washington ; but the Virginians had a truer 



34 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

appreciation of youthful dash and imprudence, and 
through their House of Burgesses gave a vote of 
thanks to the officers, and a donation in money to 
the men, for their fidelity and gallantry in defense of 
their country. 

This first campaign of Washington is a curious 
incident in his career, and gives an interesting in- 
sight into his character. A genuine soldier does not 
give great consideration to arithmetic. If generals 
never fought until success was demonstrably certain, 
there would be no pitched battles; but in the real 
soldier so much of imagination mingles with analysis 
and logic, and chance so often determines the event, 
that he is always ready to take desperate chances. 
Since the capitulation of Fort Necessity, the advance 
into the wilderness with so small a force has been 
considered the next thing to foolhardiness ; yet 
Andrew Lewis afterward, with a few Virginians, 
fought more Indians with success than the French 
force that captured Fort Necessity ; and George 
Rogers Clarke broke the Indian power and occupied 
the Northwest for Virginia with no greater force. 

If Colonel Washington had surprised and routed 
Contrecoeur at Fort Du Quesne — as was entirely 
possible — his expedition would have been considered 
a dashing exploit, whose vigor and celerity would 
have redeemed its risk. Success is the only test of 
merit in military matters. 



CHAPTER III. 

BRADDOCK. 

The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, while it settled all 
continental questions between France and England, 
left the great dispute between Catholicism and Prot- 
estantism on the new continent absolutely unad- 
justed. James I had granted to Sir William Alexan- 
der, his Scotch-English Secretary of State — created 
Lord Stirling — the great territory of Nova Scotia 
(New Scotland) lying on the north of the New Eng- 
land grant, together with the river St. Lawrence and 
a broad strip of territory along both sides of that 
river, and the north border of the Great Lakes, to 
the western extremity of Lake Superior, and thence 
in a wide belt across the continent to the Pacific. 
Lord Stirling had sold many baronetcies, with large 
estates appurtenant to the titles, in Nova Scotia, to 
raise funds to develop his great possessions. Eng- 
lish gentlemen were settled in Nova Scotia and New 
Brunswick, and were building up in the wilderness 
a vigorous, robust British Protestant society. The 
French hemmed them in, the Jesuits surrounded 
them, and they incessantly demanded protection 
from home. 

The French claimed the continent from the 
mouth of the St. Lawrence to the head of the Mis- 
sissippi and thence to the Gulf of Mexico, and from 
4 



36 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

the source of the Ohio to the western ocean. The 
English held the Atlantic seaboard from the St. Croix 
to the Savannah ; south of that the feared and hated 
Catholics had seized the country. It is difficult now 
to appreciate or sympathize with the terror, the 
horror, and the hatred with which the English nation 
regarded the Pope, and all his works and all his 
people. 

In this generation we are accustomed to consider 
all such questions as matters of conscience, and, in 
the general latitudinarianism, look upon physical 
struggles over matters of faith as proofs of narrow 
bigotry and contracted zeal. But it was not so, in 
fact, then. England was the defender of the faith 
of the rights of man, of free thought, of free con- 
tract, of free labor, and of free commerce. The 
Pope was the incarnation of the philosophy of pater- 
nalism in faith, in morals, in conduct, and in trade. 
He had never obtained absolute control of the race 
of fair-haired, blue-eyed men in the British Isles. 

From the day St. Augustine landed in Britain, the 
native race had stood firm on their principle that " the 
laws of England shall not be changed except by our 
own consent." We make our own laws, we execute 
them, and we receive no regulations for our lives, our 
property, or our morals from any foreign prince or 
power, pope or potentate. This was the spirit that 
had resisted the pretensions of the Roman oligarchy, 
from Alfred's time, to make laws for England in the 
convocations of the clergy; this the spirit that, di- 
rected by Henry VIII, had established a Free Church 
of England — free from the direction or domination 
of the Church of Rome. The fathers of the settlers 
of Virginia, of New England, and of New Scotland 



BRADDOCK. 



37 



had fought the Armada. Some of the original 
colonists had actually served under Lord Howard 
of Effingham agamst Medina-Sidonia and Guise in 
the struggle between the yeomanry of England and 
the chivalry of Spain ; and when Englishmen were 
pressed and hemmed in by the Pope and his follow- 
ers, in the new homes they had carved for themselves 
with their swords on the new continent, the old 
Berserker blood fired, and the word was passed that 
no Frenchman, Spaniard, or Papist should interfere 
with the rights of Englishmen. 

But the provincials, with a clear view of what were 
their rights, had an equally distinct conception of 
the duties of other people. It was their duty to drive 
out the French; it was equally their right not to be 
made cat's-paws, but to require proper support to be 
given them from home; for it was the old home 
quarrel and the ancient British battle they were to 
renew on the Ohio. 

The home government insisted that New York, 
Virginia, and the colonies should supply men, money, 
and subsistence for the war on France. The colo- 
nies as firmly required that British men and British 
money should support the British quarrel, while they 
furnished their fair share of the means. They were 
entirely willing to do most of the fighting, as they in 
fact did. 

Just here came in another influence of potent 
force. It seems that all masterful races send out 
colonies, to subdue and conquer. It follows, as of 
necessity, that the sons look to their father for as- 
sistance and advice; and reverence for superior 
wisdom is added to love of home and of parents. 
Therefore the provincial always occupies a position 



38 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

of inferiority to home people; and it is the peculiar 
trait of the British that they are utterly unable to 
comprehend that youth ever arrives at maturity; 
that colonies can develop into independent societies, 
capable of thinking and acting for themselves. 

Acting on this general theory of the unapproach- 
able superiority of the native-born and home-staying 
Briton, the connection between the royal military 
organization and the colonial establishments was 
firmly founded on the theory, principle, and prac- 
tice that the provincial must be inferior to the home- 
born, and that a royal commission of any grade, from 
the very nature of things, must supersede and over- 
top any commission from a provincial governor ; that 
an ensign, fresh from school, outranked a Virginia 
colonel of many campaigns. 

Lieutenant-Governor Dinwiddle, acting on this 
theory, organized the new military establishment of 
Virginia into ten companies of a hundred men each, 
and offered the command of one of them to Colonel 
Washington. The result of this organization would 
have been that any understrapper from home, scion 
of the bastard of a duke's mistress, would have com- 
manded the experienced soldiers Virginia had already 
produced and trained for her defense. Washington — 
with the rank of colonel, which he had won by ardu- 
ous service, and decorated with the thanks of Vir- 
ginia, though her representatives — promptly resigned 
his commission and retired to Mount Vernon. 

The administration at home prepared a campaign 
for America which would relieve them from pressure 
on the continent. They proposed an attack on Nova 
Scotia, directed from New York, and one on the Ohio, 
moving from Virginia. Governor Horatio Sharpe, 



BRADDOCK. 



39 



of Maryland, was commissioned major general, to 
command all the provincial troops raised, and to be 
raised, for the war against the French on the Ohio. 
Major-General Edward Braddock, an experienced 
soldier in the wars in the Low Countries, was sent 
out with two regiments of regulars, and the proper 
train of artillery to support it. He established head- 
quarters at Alexandria, on the Potomac. There, on 
April 14, 1755, he called a council of war, which was 
presided over by himself, and attended by Admiral 
Keppel, commander in chief of the navy in Ameri- 
ca, and the Governors of Massachusetts, New York, 
Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. Major-Gen- 
eral William Shirley, Governor of Massachusetts, 
had been designated by the home authorities to rank 
next to General Braddock, and to command the 
forces to be directed against Nova Scotia. Major- 
General Horatio Sharpe, Governor of Maryland, was 
to command ail the provincial troops under General 
Braddock. 

It was determined that Wills Creek, at its junc- 
tion with the Potomac, should be the base of oper- 
ations. Supplies could be boated there from Alex- 
andria, and collected from the rich valley of Virginia 
and the fertile lands of western Maryland, just then 
being occupied by emigrants from Alsace-Lorraine, 
who had made homes in the wilderness, fugitives of 
Protestantism from the Catholic King of France. 

Governor Sharpe promptly prepared proper sup- 
port for the movement. He secured from the Gen- 
eral Assembly of Maryland sufficient supplies of 
money to construct on the Potomac a substantial 
bastioned work which he called Fort Frederick, and 
his flatboats and canoes pushed up the Potomac, 



40 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



which sometimes presents rapids difficult to surmount 
and then for many miles flows in a deep and sluggish 
stream through mountain passes and primeval forest. 
The Maryland part of the arrangement was thoroughly 
carried out. 

Colonel Washington of necessity was drawn from 
Mount Vernon to the gay life of a garrison town. 
He was a soldier of some experience ; he had led in 
person a surprise party on an all-night march, and 
had held an indefensible position to the verge of 
rashness against an overwhelming force, and he had 
seen some soldiers among the French; but he never 
before had seen " real soldiers " — British soldiers, 
whose invincibility for a thousand years was as well 
established a fact as sunlight to the loyal mind, who 
on every field had proved their superiority to French- 
men. He had commanded frontiersmen, the lean, 
gaunt, sinewy, bony Virginian of the woods and the 
mountains, who knew as little of the manual of arms 
as he did of fighting by word of command, and it can 
well be imagined with what interest the bush-fight- 
ing Virginian colonel inspected, observed, and pon- 
dered the operations of that intricate machine, a regu- 
lar army. 

The form and ceremony must have been a reve- 
lation. The dress parade, the guard mounting, all 
the minutiae of camp life, presented to him many 
problems. What was the reason of those ponderous 
movements by which a column was displayed into a 
line, and a front of a few was spread out into a line 
of many ? To the untutored Virginian there must 
have appeared a great loss of time and prodigious 
increase of risk, and a consequent useless expenditure 
of life; and during that short time of observation, 



BRADDOCK. 



41 



and criticism of soldiers in camp and of officers at 
mess, curious comparisons must have been made by 
the provincial, and grave doubts arisen as to whether 
such a machine would work in the woods. 

The rank and dignity and state of the commander 
in chief required that he should be conveyed in a 
coach-and-six. Colonel Washington made no specu- 
lation about that, for he knew that that would cure 
itself. If the coach ever got as far as Fort Cumber- 
land, he was sure that its wheels would never go 
farther except as wheels of ammunition tumbrels, 
or provision carts. 

Colonel Washington was a gentleman of distinc- 
tion in the neighborhood. He had the handsomest 
estate next to Lord Fairfax in the Dominion. He 
was a man of the world, had been to the West Indies, 
and thanked by the General Assembly of his colony 
for gallantry in action, and was withal a gentleman of 
force and experience beyond his years. Commanding 
generals like smart, active, brave, useful young men 
about them, and they are glad to attach them to 
their service when they can do so as volunteers, 
without rank or pay, where gallant conduct in action 
often wins promotion and fame. It would have been 
remarkable if General Braddock had not invited 
Colonel Washington to accept the position of volun- 
teer aid-de-camp on his staff. He did so, tendering 
him the rank of captain by brevet, the highest rank 
he was authorized to confer on a volunteer aid. 
Captain Washington at once accepted the honor, and 
was the most valuable man on the staff. 

He knew the country and the people between 
Alexandria and Fort Cumberland ; he had ridden or 
marched over every foot of it. He knew the fords 



42 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



on the Shenandoah and the crossings of the Potomac, 
the trails through the woods as far west as the 
Monongahela and to the Ohio, and he knew what 
could be done and what could not be done in that 
country. He knew that a rapid march from Cum- 
berland, of a column of a thousand men in light 
marching order, carrying ten days' rations and their 
ammunition in packs on their backs, each man for 
himself, might get through the woods so fast as to 
strike Du Quesne before re-enforcements could be 
hurried to it from Lake Erie ; and he also knew that 
no troops whose march was regulated by a six-horsed 
coach could do any efficient work. 

In the woods, fighting is done quite as much with 
the legs as by the arms, and no soldier can, in the 
nature of things, accomplish much who is tied and 
shackled hand and foot by a cumbrous uniform. 
The shako of the British grenadier will of itself 
break down the best line of battle of its wearers, 
lose a position, end a war, and settle a boundary. 

Sir John St. Clair, Deputy Quartermaster General, 
had come out to assist in the campaign, which was to 
save a ministry and settle the dynasty on the throne 
of Great Britain. Fort Cumberland was selected 
as the base of military operations against western 
Canada, and Governor Sharpe had collected maga- 
zines of provisions and munition there. He had 
drawn to him many hardy and enterprising pioneers, 
who made contracts to supply beef on the hoof, and 
wagons and horses. Sir John St. Clair required the 
Governor of Pennsylvania to construct a road from 
Philadelphia to Fort Cumberland, and from Fort 
Cumberland west to the great crossing of the 
Youghiogheny. 



BRADDOCK. 



43 



Braddock, upon the rising of the coun-cil of war, 
moved his force from Alexandria up the south bank 
of the Potomac, above the mouth of Rock Creek, 
where he crossed into Maryland with the Forty- 
eighth Regiment, Colonel Dunbar, the Forty-fourth 
Regiment moving on to Winchester. He camped 
for six days at the new palatine settlement of Fred- 
erick, and became very indignant at the neglect of 
the Pennsylvanians to construct the road and to sup- 
ply the two hundred wagons demanded by Sir John 
St. Clair as necessary for the transportation of the 
expedition. He proposed to send out into the 
country, and impress wagons and teams under the 
direction of the quartermaster general. Captain 
Washington, and Benjamin Franklin, postmaster 
general of the colonies, defended their countrymen, 
and excused the lack of provision made for the 
army. But Franklin, with that shrewd insight into 
common human nature which was to make him the 
philosopher of the commonplace, at once discerned 
the opportunity to make influence for himself and 
money for his people. He noticed that Sir John St. 
Clair wore a Hussar uniform. The German settlers 
of Pennsylvania, by experience and by tradition, 
well knew the atrocities of the Hussars in Germany 
and the Low Countries, in the wars, from which they 
had fled, and from which their ancestors had suf- 
fered for generations. 

"Hussar" was a name of terror to them — the 
embodiment of war, of rapine, of fire and sword, 
of famine and death. So, from Frederick, Franklin 
wrote and published a letter to the inhabitants of 
the counties of Lancaster, York, and Cumberland, in 
which he informed them that the British officers 



44 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



" proposed to send an armed force immediately into 
their counties, to seize as many of the best car- 
nages and horses as should be wanted, and compel 
as many persons into the service as should be neces- 
sary to drive and take care of them." 

He showed that if they furnished teams and wag- 
ons and drivers voluntarily they would receive in 
wages fully ^30,000 in gold and silver of the King's 
money. " If you do not come forward and do your 
duty," said he, "I shall be obliged to inform the gen- 
eral in fourteen days, and I suppose Sir John St. 
Clair, Uhe Hussar,' with a body of soldiers, will im- 
mediately enter the province, which I shall be sorry 
to hear of." The glittering suggestion of ;£3o,ooo in 
gold and silver acted in an agreeable and persuasive 
manner on the bucolic mind; but the touch of Na- 
ture, the sly insinuation about "the Hussar," was 
convincing. The roads were crowded with four- 
horse teams, to earn the pay, and to escape *' the 
Hussar," all of w^hich reported at Fort Cumberland 
about the last of June. 

On April 30th Braddock left Frederick in the char- 
iot he had purchased from Governor Sharpe ; and, 
escorted by his bodyguard, a troop of Virginia Light 
Horse — the only cavalry in his command — passed 
over the mountain north of Frederick, across Middle- 
town Valley, through a gap in South Mountain, which 
still bears his name (over what, in subsequent years, 
became the battlefield of Antietam), to the mouth 
of the Conococheague, where he crossed the Poto- 
mac. The town of Williamsport is now at the ford 
where he crossed, and Williamsport long afterward 
became one of the principal competitors for the site 
of the federal city. In the order of the day of April 



BRADDOCK. 45 



„th the route is published, providing for the march 
to Wills Creek, a total of one hundred and twenty- 
nine miles to be made by May 9th. 

The Forty-eighth, Colonel Dunbar, moved out 
on the 29th and made the route as by orders direct- 
ed first across Middletown Valley, then to Conoco- 
cheague; there it crossed the Potomac, thence up the 

th ba'nk of the Potomac by the mouth of Ut 
Cacapon to Old Town, where it recrossed to the 
to th bank, and thence to Fort Cumberland, where 
it reported May 9th, according to the route and 
time set out in orders. 

A few miles below Wills Creek the command was 
halted, and brought to a present, as the commander 
in chief whirled by in his coach-and-six The drums 
beat the Grenadier's March, the colors drooped 
and all "the pomp and pride and circumstance of 
tlorious war " was displayed. At the fort this gor- 
geous apparition was saluted with seventeen guns- 
the number appropriate to the commander of an 
army in the field. In the afternoon the whole com- 
„,and was assembled, the Forty-fourth, Sir Peter 
Halkett, having arrived from Winchester; and on 
the loth it was announced in the order of the day 
that " Mr. Washington is appointed Aid-de-camp to 
His E-xcellency General Braddock." On the 12th 
the troops were brigaded, and the genera order in 
Braddock's orderly book, the original of which is 
in the Congressional Library at Washington, gives an 
accurate statement of the troops present for duty, 
and their number of effective men. ^ , ^ ,„ 

The First Brigade, under the command of Colo- 
nel Sir Peter Halkett, consisted of— 



46 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

MEN. 

Forty-fourth Regiment, Grenadier Guards 700 

Captain Rutherford's and Captain Gates's inde- 
pendent companies of New York . . 95 

Captain Poison's company of Carpenters 48 

Captain Peronnu's and Captain Waggoner's Vir- 
ginia Rangers 92 

Captain Dagworthy's Maryland Rangers 49 

Total, First Brigade 984 

Second Brigade, Colonel Dunbar: 

Forty-eighth Regiment 650 

Captain Demerie's South Carolina detachment 97 

Captain Dobbs's North Carolina Rangers 80 

Captain Mercer's company of Carpenters 35 

Captain Stevens's Virginia Rangers 48 

Captain Hogg's Virginia Rangers 40 

Captain Cox's Virginia Rangers 43 

Total, Second Brigade 993 

There was also a train of artillery and a force of 
engineers, and a detachment of thirty sailors from 
the British fleet. It was provided with one hundred 
and fifty wagons and two thousand horses. 

The First Brigade marched on June 8th, and the 
next day the Second followed, under Lieutenant- 
Colonel Gage, of the Forty-eighth. The perform- 
ances of that march, if they were not proved by 
absolutely indisputable proof, would be simply in- 
credible. But Braddock's road is now (March, 1894) 
perfectly well defined, north of Cumberland. It 
looks as if intelligent purpose had exerted itself to 
waste time and labor. It is located without the 
slightest regard to grades or obstacles. Instead of 
blasting rocks — or, still better, avoiding them when- 
ever possible — the engineers seem to have tried to 



BRADDOCK. 47 

leave monuments to their own stupidity. Great 
bowlders in the road, instead of being rolled or 
blasted out of the way, are carefully hewed down so 
as to present no obstruction. The third camp was 
only five miles from the first. 

In seven days they reached the Little Meadows, 
twenty miles from Cumberland. Here a council of 
war was called by the commanding general, and he 
decided to move out with a light column of twelve 
hundred men and twelve guns, leaving Colonel Dun- 
bar in charge of the reserve, the wagons, and re- 
serve artillery, to push on as rapidly as possible. 
On the 23d of June the advance reached the Great 
Crossing of the Youghiogheny, thirty-seven miles 
from Fort Cumberland-fifteen days for thirty-seven 
miles. On the 8th of July he arrived at the Monon- 
gahela, fifteen miles below Fort Du Quesne. A defile 
on the north or right bank rendered it necessary to 
cross the river, and then recross eight miles farther 
down the stream. During the day before, small par- 
ties of the enemy had been hanging on the flanks 
and picking up stragglers, thus showing that the 
movements of the invading force were known and 
accurately observed. 

The passage of the river then became a delicate 
and difficult operation. At 3 a. m. of the 9th Lieu- 
tenant-Colonel Gage was sent with a detachment of 
the Forty-eighth Regiment to occupy the crossing 
and cover the movement. An hour later Sir John St. 
Clair moved out with a working party, to construct 
roads, and make the fords practicable for wagons 
and artillery, by cutting down the banks, and at 6 
A. M. the main body, under command of Braddock, 
took up the route. He intended to take Fort Du 



48 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

Quesne that day, and proposed that it should be 
done according to the rules and regulations of civil- 
ized war — by troops on dress parade, with colors 
flying, drums beating, and trumpets sounding — and 
not in a disorderly chance medley of wood rangers 
and hunting-shirt-clad, moccasin-shod hunters and 
scouts, who knew no more of the minutiae and ele- 
gances of war than they did of Almack's or of 
White's celebrated club. 

After passing the first ford they reached the sec- 
ond about noon. The low land on that side of the 
river was level, open woodland, of heavy walnut 
timber, and no undergrowth, the ground well cov- 
ered with grass. The enemy were frequently visible 
on the heights on the other side, and Braddock, to 
impress them with the kind of war they were to ex- 
pect from him, spent an hour in putting his troops 
through battalion movements, in full sight of the 
French and Indian scouts, and his men were given 
their dinners. 

A recent publication of the memoirs of Charles 
de Langlade, the French officer who led the attack- 
ing party, gives us a graphic description from their 
point of view. When information of the approach 
of Braddock with an army of over two thousand 
men came, the commander of Fort Du Quesne was in 
doubt whether to fight, to surrender, or to evacuate 
and destroy the post. The first course was decided 
on, and for this purpose De Beaujeu was ordered to 
take a party out and attack the enemy before he 
could invest the fort. He organized a force of two 
hundred and fifty French and six hundred and fifty 
Indians. Moving out at 9 a. m. of the 9th, De Beau- 
jeu found himself at the ford of the Monongahela 



BRADDOCK. 



49 



at 12,30 p. M., just as Braddock was going through 
his battalion drill, and witnessed the dinner of those 
well-trained troops. 

On the north side of the Monongahela there was 
an open meadow or wooded glade, level, and with- 
out undergrowth, spreading back a quarter of a mile 
from the river ; then the high ground usual in river 
formations begins to ascend until it rises into a ridge, 
covered with heavy timber, bushes, and thick under- 
growth. From this ridge run two ravines several 
hundred yards apart down to the river's edge. 

The column was put in motion about i o'clock, 
the guides in front, then the engineers, with six light 
horsemen ; then Lieutenant-Colonel Gage, with the 
Forty-eighth Regiment ; then Sir John St. Clair, Quar- 
termaster General, with two six-pounder guns and the 
men, wagons, and tools of the working party ; then 
General Braddock, with Colonel Sir Peter Halkett 
and the Forty-fourth ; then the artillery and wagons ; 
then the provincial troops for rear guard. 

While the advance was crossing the ford and 
moving into the forest the rear was cooking rations; 
for the column moved so slowly, the head would 
some days go into camp about the time the rear was 
moving out of the camp of the day before. De Lang- 
lade took in the conditions at once, and urged his 
superior to attack, which was done with energy and 
promptness. The first known by the British was 
that the guides saw a force of French and Indians, 
led by a Frenchman, De Beaujeu, gayly uniformed 
in hunting shirt and gorget, charging on them out 
of the woods in front. At the same instant a fire 
broke out of the ravines on each side of the column. 

Captain Washington, the volunteer aid, would 



so 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



have committed a grave breach of the proprieties 
if on the field of battle he had volunteered to his 
chief advice unasked ; but the emergency was so 
pressing, and time so precious, that he begged his 
commanding officer to let him bring up the provin- 
cials, and cover the front and flank with skirmishers, 
until the position and numbers of the enemy could 
be developed. 

The trained soldier could not consent to veterans 
being protected by undrilled, half-armed, savagely 
clad countrymen, and said that his men should fight 
in line or not at all. The provincials had required no 
orders; the first shot told the whole tale to them; 
they were in the presence of the enemy in force, for 
half a dozen Indians alone would never fire at such a 
force. Killing was in order, and they proposed to be 
killers and not killees, and do their part of the work. 
Without waiting for word or order, they broke and 
took to the trees. Braddock was loud in damning 
their cowardice ; but before one of his staff could 
ride up to Colonel Gage, the provincials knew all 
about it and acted accordingly. They covered the 
rear of the army, and the artillery and wagons. The 
French attack spread with the rapidity of fire in the 
dry grass. It ran along both sides of the English 
column and closed round the rear. The British 
stood in a road twelve feet wide, falling in their 
tracks without firing a shot in reply. Braddock sent 
an aid to the front to find out from Colonel Gage 
what was the matter. 

Struggling through a huddled column in a packed 
road is slow work for man and horse, and it took 
time to get forward, and as much to get back. The 
fire in front increased, and Braddock, all afire, spurred 



BRADDOCK. 5 1 

forward, assumed command of the Forty-eighth, and 
ordered it to form by platoons, and charge the woods 
to the right and left. A platoon can not be formed 
in a wood road twelve feet wide. Each flank will 
extend into the woods, and the line be pinioned, as 
if its arms were tied. 

In the confusion the men fell by rank. The 
French account says that many officers were killed 
with their dinner napkins pinned to their breasts. 
This one incident lets in a clear beam of light over 
the tragedy of folly and incompetence. When it was 
once reported to "Stonewall Jackson" that his ad- 
versary was marching up the valley attended by a 
herd of four thousand beef cattle, his reply was, 
" Good ! we can beat people who have to drive their 
rations on the hoof with them." And he did. 

So the Frenchman might have said : " We can 
beat any soldiers who require dinner napkins on the 
eve of battle." Napkins imply cooks, cooks require 
cooking utensils, wagons, all the vast impedimenta 
of a luxurious and overfed army, and prove lack of 
endurance. But they do not imply lack of courage. 
That the British breed has never shown, and the 
gamest, most gallant, most daring, most chivalrous 
class that ever lived is the English gentry, of which 
the officers of the army were then composed, and 
their American kin. On that field they proved them- 
selves worthy of their blood. They showed every 
soldierly trait except sense. 

Braddock was on his horse in front of the column, 
directing movements, shouting, gesticulating, swear- 
ing at the stupidity of his men, who would not form 
and would not charge. Said the men in the ranks, 
" We'll fight men — we can't fight bushes," and as the 
5 



52 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



slaughter increased they became rattled. The line 
officers tried to lead squads into the bushes. 

Colonel Gage planted the colors of the two regi- 
ments in the road, to form on. Still the men fell, 
and Braddock stormed. The line officers, " with din- 
ner napkins pinned to their breasts," formed squads 
of officers by themselves, and showed the way to 
death. The bush fighters in the rear never lost their 
self-possession for a moment. They were at their 
accustomed work, and they went at it like days' la- 
bor. Many of them knew Captain Washington per- 
sonally and had served under him, and all of them 
knew him by reputation. 

Hurrying up and down the narrow road, when the 
commanding general rode to the front and took 
command there, his provincial staff officer naturally 
was sent back to direct the provincials, and represent 
the general on that part of the field. As the French 
fire poured in on his flanks, Washington rushed Cap- 
tain Waggoner's two Virginia companies by the right 
down into the ravine, faced to the left, and then 
charged straight up it, driving everything before him, 
and relieved that flank of the British column. 

In so doing, the command got up in advance of 
Gage's column, when Braddock was swearing and the 
line officers dying. As they passed the English in 
the road, the latter, misled by the hunting shirts and 
head gear of the Virginians, poured a volley into 
their rear, and killed and wounded two thirds of 
them. That ended all check to the French, and the 
rest of it was merely a battue^ where the hunter shot 
his game from cover, without risk, and hardly with 
any excitement. 

The English, huddled up, fired into the groups in 



BRADDOCK. 



53 



front of them, fired in the air. In the region of the 
battlefield, tradition to this day alleges that Brad- 
dock was not killed by Indian or Frenchman, but by 
Tom Fossit, a private in Captain Cholmondeley's 
company of the Forty-eighth Regiment. Fossit had 
been enlisted at Shippensburg, Pa., and had a brother 
in his company, who was killed in the battle. He 
lived for many years, and doubtless enjoyed many a 
'' treat " in exchange for his fable. 

His story was that Braddock killed his brother < 
for dodging behind a tree, and that he avenged his 
brother on the spot. This story is merely incredible. 
Braddock had five horses killed under him, and in 
the close fighting all around him the miracle is that 
he lived as long as he did. A mounted officer of the 
striking appearance, with the conspicuous uniform 
of a major general attracted a hundred bullets be- 
fore the fatal one hit ; and it is incredible that a 
private soldier should be guilty of the dastardly 
treason of killing his commanding general in battle. 
The military profession evolves a respect for rank 
as representing power, that increases and intensifies 
as rank rises and power enlarges, and in battle the 
commanding officer is the god, the human provi- 
dence of the private soldier. He holds his life in 
the look of his eye or the crook of his finger, and 
can order the private to instant death by a wave of 
his hand, and does it constantly. Therefore no pri- 
vate soldier who ever carried a musket or drew 
saber, ever, anywhere could or ever did, in the heat 
of battle, with death looking right into his eyes, con- 
ceive of killing the superintending power which ab- 
solutely controlled his destiny. 

If Braddock did kill Fossit's brother — which is 



54 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



quite probable, for the general was likely to do so 
foolish a thing — it is almost certain that Tom broke 
for the nearest tree, and kept that between him and 
the general until he had an opportunity to escape 
official recognition. At last Braddock fell mortally 
wounded. That ended it. Most of the field and 
line officers were already on the ground, and when 
the general in front of or up with his first line fell 
over the neck of his horse, the first line broke and 
went back on the second, they two on the third, and 
the whole went sweeping down the road like a stam- 
peded herd of buffalo. There was no withstanding 
the tornado. Washington afterward said that it was 
as impossible to stop them as to stop " a gang of wild 
bears from the mountains, or a mountain torrent." 

It bore everything before it, and ran over horses, 
wagons, and men of the rear guard. Captain Wash- 
ington held his provincials with a cool and steady 
hand until the torrent rushed by, and then deployed 
them across the road, and on each side of it, to check 
the pursuit. He pushed back to where some sol- 
diers were struggling to carry off the heavy and 
cumbrous body of their general. Jumping from his 
horse, he jerked the official silk sash from the waist 
of the commanding officer, and using it as a litter, 
pushed the carriers behind his line. He then dog- 
gedly gave ground, for all that was left to be done 
was to gain time and save Dunbar. 

As the stampede swept by the wagons, the wag- 
oners cut their horses loose and whipped for their 
lives. After every great disaster the most fright- 
ened are the fleetest, and they invariably spread 
the news as they fly that "All is lost ! Everybody is 
killed ! The command is cut up ! " So when the ter- 



BRADDOCK. 



55 



rifled wagoners flew through Dunbar's camp, not a 
word of explanation was needed. The harnessed 
horses, the riders belaboring them at every jump, as 
they sped toward Fort Cumberland, told the story of 
rout and flight without words. 

Colonel Dunbar by strict discipline held his com- 
mand firm. He was forty miles in rear. As soon as 
the remnants of the army recrossed the Mononga- 
hela that evening, Braddock sent Captain Washing- 
ton back to Dunbar to bring up wagons and pro- 
visions. The old soldier was thinking more of his 
wounded than of himself, and he sent back the best 
man about him to get help for them. His other aids 
were killed or wounded. 

Captain Washington rode back that night on one 
horse, when the darkness was so intense, and the 
road so obscure, that he passed much of his time 
leading his horse and kneeling on the ground feel- 
ing for the road. Notwithstanding this, he and his 
two orderlies reached Dunbar's camp at sunrise, and 
immediately returned with supplies and re-enforce- 
ments to the army. He met it at Gist's plantation, 
and, returning, reached Dunbar's camp that night, 
where they halted for two nights and a day. 

Then continuing the retreat on the 13th, they 
reached the Great Meadows, where Braddock died 
and was buried before day next morning in the mid- 
dle of the road. Captain Washington reading the serv- 
ice of the Church over him. The wagon train was 
driven over the grave to save it from the Indians. 
From Little Meadows Washington wrote to Colonel 
Inness, at Fort Cumberland, asking for aid, which that 
officer promptly dispatched to him. The melancholy 
party arrived at the fort on the i6th and 17th. 



56 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



Dunbar arrived there on the 20th, and was obliged 
to stop until August 2d to take care of the wounded. 
On that day, with his entire command, consisting of 
the survivors of the Forty-fourth and Forty-eighth 
Regiments and of the Virginia battalion, and of the 
independent companies, numbering in all about fifteen 
hundred men fit for duty, he left the fort and marched 
eastward to Philadelphia. 

He left Fort Cumberland in charge of Colonel 
Innes, with one company of Virginians and one of 
Maryland Rangers. About 1824, what were supposed 
to be the remains of General Braddock, were found 
by some workmen repairmg the National Road. 
They were removed, reburied near the road under 
an oak, and marked Braddock's grave. Some years 
afterward, English gentlemen visiting the spot caused 
a plain fence to be erected around it, and thus it 
stands now, after nearly threescore and ten years. 

This affair began about i p. m. and ended by five 
o'clock. It was short and sharp. De Beaujeu, the 
French commander, was killed early in the action. 
There were two hundred and fifty French and Ca- 
nadians and six hundred and fifty Indians in the at- 
tacking force. On the English side were the two 
regular regiments of seasoned veterans of five hun- 
dred each recruited up to seven hundred, five com- 
panies of Virginia troops, fifty Maryland Rangers, 
one hundred South Carolinians, one hundred North 
Carolinians, but in the advanced column actually 
engaged only twelve hundred men were present. 
There were no Maryland troops in the expedition 
except Captain Dagworthy's. The French account 
says they counted thirteen hundred and fifty dead 
on the field and on the retreat. There is no doubt 



BRADDOCK. 



57 



that all they did count were dead^ but only twelve 
hundred were engaged. 

Colonel Sir Peter Halkett, of the Forty-fourth, 
his son, who was brigade major, and William Shirley, 
son of General and Governor Shirley, of Massachu- 
setts, were killed. Colonel Burton, of the Forty- 
eighth, and Sir John St. Clair, were wounded. Of 
eighty-nine commissioned officers in the two regi- 
ments of regulars in the fight, twenty-six were killed 
and thirty-seven wounded ; four hundred and thirty- 
seven men were reported killed and three hundred 
and eighty-five wounded — a total loss of eight hun- 
dred and fifteen men. 

All the wounded who were left on the field were 
killed by the Indians, with the exception of two re- 
markable men. Dr. Hugh Mercer and a comrade, who, 
left wounded, made his way through the woods to 
give up his life, as General Mercer at the battle of 
Princeton, fighting the king he came so near dying 
for at the battle of the Monongahela. The oppos- 
ing force lost not thirty men and their commander. 

Captain Washington was untouched, although he 
had two horses killed under him and several bullets 
through his clothes. He reported to the Governor 
of Virginia that his rangers had '' fought like soldiers 
and died like men." Beyond a peradventure, his 
coolness, his self-control, his will saved all that was 
saved. If it had not been for him, every British 
soldier would have been scalped. Twelve of them, 
taken prisoners, were burned alive at Fort Du Quesne 
the next evening. 

And the endurance of the Virginian captain is won- 
derful. After the entire day, from four o'clock in 
the morning of the 9th until dark of the loth, in the 



58 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

saddle, four hours of it under the fiercest fire, which 
is the most exhausting excitement known to man, he 
rode and walked all night back to Dunbar's camp 
and returned at once to his wounded chief, and from 
the 9th until the i6th never took his clothes off or 
laid down to sleep undressed. The iron will was 
equaled by the iron frame and the iron constitution, 
and this prodigious effort was made by a man who 
had been left behind at Dunbar's camp, too ill to ac- 
company the command, and had only reached the 
army the evening before the battle, hauled in a 
wagon because he was too weak to ride. The ex- 
hibition of endurance by Captain Washington for 
seven days after the battle exceeded that of courage, 
coolness, and self-control by him on the disastrous 
field. He was then in his twenty-fifth year. 

The immediate consequence of the rout, of Brad- 
dock was a more vigorous effort on the part of the 
Government, which resulted in the Treaty of Paris 
of 1763, whereby Canada and Florida were both 
ceded to Great Britain, and the Roman Catholic 
power was eliminated as a political element on the 
North American continent from the Arctic circle to 
the Gulf of Mexico and from the Atlantic to the 
Mississippi River. West of that river the Spanish 
Americans claimed jurisdiction to the Pacific — a 
claim to be entirely extinguished in the next two 
generations. 

The far-reaching results of that campaign were, 
first, the annihilation of British prestige among the 
provincials; second, fraternity and a tendency to co- 
operate among all the English in America ; third, a 
distinct bias toward independence of the mother 
country. The seven years' war in America was dis- 



BRADDOCK. 



59 



tinctly a war of race and religion. The English 
Protestants were pressed on the North by the French 
and on the South and West by the Spaniards, both 
adherents of the Church of Rome. 

The conquest of Canada and the cession of Florida 
immediately relieved the provincials from the hostile 
pressure of the Roman Catholics and the Indians, 
and from their dependence on home. They had co- 
operated together during the war, each province by 
its own General Assembly voting men and money 
for the common defense, according to its judgment 
of what was just and necessary, and at the battle of 
the Monongahela with the two regiments of British 
regulars there were present companies from Virginia, 
New York, Maryland, and the Carolinas, who in the 
North had fought the French and Indians, and in 
the South the Spaniards and Indians — all Roman 
Catholics. 

An extract from a newspaper of the day will give 
some idea of the sentiment pervading the English in 
America, for in the Catholic province of Maryland, 
the birthplace and nursery of freedom of thought in 
all the world, the fire of bigotry burned as fiercely 
as in Massachusetts Bay, where the idea of liberty of 
conscience had as yet never penetrated. In Green's 
Maryland Gazette, published at Annapolis on July 
3ij i755> is contained an account of Braddock's de- 
feat on July 9th, three weeks previous. " After the 
engagement," says the newspaper, *' the Indians pur- 
sued our people to the Monongahela, and scalped and 
plundered all that were left on the field, except five 
or six, who, not being able to keep pace with the 
victors in their return to the fort, were all treated in 
the same manner, one Virginian only surviving it. 



6o GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

[Oh, horrid barbarity, to kill in cold blood! But, 
Protestant reader, such is the treatment we may ex- 
pect to receive from his most Christian Majesty's 
American allies if ever we should be so unhappy as 
to fall in their hands, except we give up our re- 
ligious liberty, and everything that is dear and valu- 
able, and submit to be his vassals, and dupes of the 
Romish clergy, whose most tender mercies are but 
hellish cruelties, wherever they have the power to 
exercise them.] " 

The French Minister of War began immediately 
to intrigue to stir up dissension with the mother 
country, and to encourage the growing feelmg of 
strength and maturity which began rapidly to per- 
vade the English in America. The New England 
colonies had never been loyal to the Crown or to 
the traditions of their ancestors. Planted by refu- 
gees from social and religious ostracism, they had 
always been in sympathy with discontent at home. 
Enterprising, energetic, and intellectual, the necessi- 
ties of their environment, the rigors of their climate, 
and the constant struggle with the forces of Nature, 
had developed a character which for self-control and 
concentration has rarely been equaled, and never ex- 
celled, in the history of the world. Their position 
had created a trade, arising out of natural conditions, 
which was very profitable. They smuggled sugar 
from the West Indies, converted it into rum in New 
England, carried the rum to Africa, where they bar- 
tered it for negroes, and the negroes to Virginia and 
Maryland, where they exchanged them for tobacco, 
which they sold at their home. 

The breaking up of this profitable exchange by 
the enforcement of the regulations of trade between 



BRADDOCK. 6l 

the colonies and the mother country, whereby all 
products of any colony could be shipped to any other 
colony only through home ports in home bottoms, 
naturally and justly enraged the New Englanders. 
They had never been monarchists, and they had be- 
come hostile to aristocratic institutions. 

But in Maryland and Virginia the social organiza- 
tion was entirely different. Many cadets of noble 
families had settled in these colonies, or been pro- 
vided with offices under the provincial governments. 
All their sympathies were with the established order 
at home. They were the pets of the monarchy. The 
trade regulations did not disturb them ; they had no 
ships or commerce of their own, and there was no 
radical reason why they should participate in a move- 
ment that must, beyond a doubt, result in a separa- 
tion from the mother country. 

And there existed a sentiment in the two colonies 
on the Chesapeake widely differing from the sym- 
pathies of New England. Jacobitism, sympathy 
with the Stuarts, had never been extinguished in the 
old cavalier colonies. Their leading families were 
almost all cavalier. George Mason's grandfather 
had commanded a royalist troop at Marston Moor, 
and Washington's ancestor had held Worcester for 
the King. The grandfather of Thomas Johnson, a 
leader of the Revolution in Maryland, who nominated 
Washington for commander in chief, came over in 
1690, and in 1693 was arrested and recognized for 
good behavior by the Governor and council for say- 
ing, " The people are all rogues to the King, and that 
he would swear to no king but King James." 

Charles II was proclaimed King as soon as the 
news of the death of his father reached St. Mary's, 



^2 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

and Charles was King of Maryland eleven years 
before he was King of England. The ancestor of 
Richard Henry Lee, author of the resolution of in- 
dependence, had been sent by Virginia to Breda, to 
induce Charles to come to Virginia and establish his 
government there; and although the Commonwealth 
did send a fleet "to reduce the settlements on the 
Chesapeake," and the old governments were recon- 
structed and Commonwealth governments actually 
set up by the bayonet in these two provinces, they 
never had the respect, sympathy, or support of the 
body of the people. They fell as soon as the prop 
was removed. 

When New England began to move in resistance 
to the royal authority, the first impulse of the Eng- 
lish on the Chesapeake was to stand by them, for 
with them and their ancestors, from time immemo- 
rial, the controlling element of character has been 
that "blood is thicker than water"; and the next 
feeling that stirred the people was that now they 
could get rid of the House of Hanover and all its 
disgusting surroundings. 

Dr. Hugh Mercer, of the Braddock campaign — 
afterward General Mercer, of the battles of Trenton 
and of Princeton — had been on the staff of Prince 
Charles at Culloden, and both colonies were full of 
the defeated and disappointed adherents of the Stu- 
arts. It is not probable that sympathy for the Stu- 
arts and dislike to the House of Hanover was the 
dominating force that created the revolution, but it 
was one of the forces. 

The Jacobite sentiment was strong on the Chesa- 
peake, and led men more easily to recur to the funda- 
mental principles of English liberty. Their ancestors 



BRADDOCK. 



63 



had always insisted that they would be governed only 
by laws of their own making, made by their repre- 
sentatives in Parliament assembled. Every English- 
man's house was his castle. Every man's property 
was his own, and no part of it could legally be taken 
for public use, to defend the State, or to support the 
Government, without his consent, freely given by his 
representative. 

The belief was firmly imbedded in their hearts 
that there could be " no taxation without representa- 
tion." And another right, the inheritance of Eng- 
lishmen, was the right to resist illegal government, 
by force and arms. The right of rebellion was as 
well defined as the right of representation, and rebel- 
lion was not necessarily revolution. Rebellion cor- 
rected the abuses of government; revolution over- 
turned government itself. Rebellion secured new 
guarantees for liberty; revolution created new 
government. 

Thus had the barons wrung from John the guar- 
antees of the great charter — a grant from the Crown 
of security for rights to a class. Thus had the Par- 
liament resisted the exactions of the Star Chamber 
and its attempt to levy ship money, taxes without the 
consent of the taxed. Thus had the body of the 
people overthrown the Commonwealth when it at- 
tempted to govern England without a king or House 
of Lords, and thus revolutionize the ancient consti- 
tution of the realm ; and thus had the grandfathers 
of the leaders of the American Revolution expelled 
James Stuart when he purposed to establish abso- 
lute government in England. The idea of forcible 
resistance to illegal government was deeply imbed- 
ded in the American heart. 



64 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



The convention between the Commonwealth and 
Virginia, in 165 1, secured to the Virginians the right 
to make their own laws and to tax themselves. The 
charter of Maryland guaranteed to the people of 
that province the same rights; and when the Gov- 
ernor attempted to levy taxes by proclamation, fix- 
ing the fees of the land office, the General Assembly 
promptly denounced the illegal act, and, in a report 
on the inalienable rights of Englishmen — which, it 
has been said, was worthy of the most distinguished 
statesman of England — demonstrated that taxes 
could only be legally levied by the representatives 
of the people who were taxed. 

When the Governor of North Carolina attempted 
to coerce the North Carolinians into paying taxes 
without their consent — disguised as illegal fees — 
they promptly applied the ancestral remedy, and in 
arms resisted the King's Governor and the King's 
troops at the battle of the Alamance, in 1771. They 
were defeated with heavy loss, and some were 
promptly hung as traitors; but that only proved 
that the King's troops were better armed, better 
disciplined, and better commanded than the regu- 
lators. It settled nothing as to the right of taxa- 
tion and the right of rebellion. In 1772 the people 
of Rhode Island captured and burned to the water's 
edge the Royal armed vessel the Gaspe, in Narra- 
gansett Bay, for attempting to enforce the revenue 
laws; and Stephen Hopkins, Chief Justice of Rhode 
Island, refused to issue warrants for the guilty par- 
ties or to recognize their arrest as legal. 

When the Stamp Act was passed, in 1765, requir- 
ing that all process of courts, conveyances, and legal 
papers should be on stamped paper, the County 



BRADDOCK. 



65 



Court of Frederick County, Maryland, in November, 
1765, decided that the act did not bind the freemen 
of Maryland, who had had no voice in its enactment, 
and committed their clerk to prison for contempt in 
refusing to obey their order to issue process without 
stamps. Thus in all the English colonies the right 
of resistance and rebellion had been claimed, as- 
serted, and exercised. 

A common sentiment, a common danger, and a 
common cause are potent forces toward creating 
sympathy and concerted action. The hearts of men 
are more efficient allies than their heads, for they do 
not calculate consequences. With the destruction 
of British prestige came of necessity the obliteration 
of provinciali'im — the admitted superiority of every- 
thing home-born or home-produced to everything 
colonial. Thackeray faithfully paints the picture of 
the time when he describes the young Virginian vis- 
iting the home of his fathers as regarded as a young 
Mohawk, and an object of surprise because he was 
white. Braddock himself and his officers did not 
measure up to the colonial standard of manners, of 
education, or of intelligence. Their superiors in 
every respect could be found in the routs at Wil- 
liamsburg and Annapolis, or the parlors of Philadel- 
phia, New York, and Boston ; and in place of the 
provincial feeling of inferiority, rapidly developed a 
continental sentiment of present equality, with a 
swelling sense of a great destiny, when America 
would fill and act a great part in the future of the 
human race. 

When the Stamp Act was passed the continent 
called the comrades of the battle of the Mononga- 
hela to come together and consult as to what the 



56 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

common right was entitled to, and what the common 
interest required to be done. The Braddock cam- 
paign was the author of the Stamp Act congress, as 
that was of the Articles of Confederation, and they 
of the Constitution of the United States. They 
were all the product of great historical forces which 
direct the march of nations and the development of 
races, and lead to results beyond human prevision, 
human fears, or human hopes. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE planter's LIFE AND MARRIAGE. 

During the years prior to the breaking out of the 
rebellion, Washington devoted himself to his large 
estate on the Potomac, his servants, his crops, and his 
stock. The most curious disquisitions have been 
written and most extraordinary analyses been made 
as to the wonderful traits of this astonishing youth. 
He is a prig, or a phenomenon, according to the 
point of view and the medium through which he is 
examined. In one of his youthful letters, unfortu- 
nately preserved, reference is made to a " lowland 
beauty " to whom his adolescent fancy had turned ; 
and half a dozen Virginian families still claim that 
their ancestress was the lowland beauty. He fell 
in love with Mary Bland, of Westmoreland ; with 
Lucy Grimes, who afterward married " Light Horse 
Harry " Lee, and became the mother of Robert E. 
Lee — greatest of the line of Lees ; with Mary Gary, 
of Vaucluse ; with Betsey Fauntleroy, of Richmond 
Gounty ; and with Mary Phillipse, the heiress, of New 
York — not to mention the hundred other girls from 
Boston to Annapolis with whom the young Vir- 
ginian colonel flirted and made love. 

There is a portrait of Golonel Washington, 
painted by Gharles Wilson Peale, at Mount Vernon, 
in 1772, as colonel of the Twenty-second Regiment, 
6 



68 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

Virginia Militia. It is in the uniform of a Virginia 
colonel — blue coat, scarlet vest and breeches, and 
represents a young man. His smooth-shaven face 
and natural hair show a complexion as clean and 
clear as perfect health, happy surroundings, and good 
habits, with constant life in the open air, can give, 
and is as fine a specimen of manly beauty as is ever 
seen. The frontispiece to this volume is copied from 
Peale's admirable portrait. The caricatures of Stuart 
and Trumbull, and the rest, when life had become a 
burden to escape the portrait painters, give no idea 
of the young Virginian of ly^S-'jz. 

The Virginian way always has been to make 
love to every pretty girl with whom he was thrown. 
Young, handsome, with the second fortune in the 
province, and family as good as any — for Lord Fair- 
fax's Scotch barony did not outrank, in the esti- 
mation of the cavalier Virginians, the position in 
society and claim for respect of the descendant of 
that Colonel Washington who held Worcester for the 
king and for so long answered to every summons for 
surrender "at his Majestie's pleasure" — with the 
first military reputation among the soldiers Vir- 
ginia's wars against the French and Indians had 
trained — with the grave, decorous manners of his 
generation, no man in Virginia would naturally 
be received by the matrons and maids who clus- 
tered at the country houses along the Potomac, the 
Rappahannock, the Pamunkey, and the James, with 
more cordial welcome than Colonel Washington, of 
Mount Vernon. 

At Belvoir with the Fairfaxes, at Vaucluse with 
the Carys, at Eagle's Nest with the Fitzhughs, at 
Stratford House with the Lees; with the Carters at 



THE PLANTER'S LIFE AND MARRIAGE. 



69 



Sabine Hall, and with the Fauntleroys in Richmond, 
then as now, a well-born and agreeable, handsome, 
rich, distinguished young gentleman was a welcome 
guest, and George Washington became the toast of 
the tide-water country. What wonder, then, that he 
fell in love with every pretty girl and told her so, 
in his visitings among his neighbors, and on his 
official journeys to and from Williamsburgh, when 
his habitual stopping places were at these very 
country houses, and his customary hostesses these 
girls and their mothers! 

Washington was a man all over — a man with 
strong appetites, fierce temper, positive, belligerent, 
and aggressive. The quality in which he differed 
from almost all men was his absolutely perfect con- 
trol over his passions and his mind. In his boy- 
hood he appreciated the weak points of his character 
— his tendency to be moved by impulse and sudden 
tempests of emotion — and he set himself deliberately 
to work to correct these infirmities. His fortitude, 
his patience, his perseverance, his tenacity, were all 
the result of this introspection, and, taken with the 
severe physical training of his youth, in the woods 
with his horse and gun, in the forest with his hatchet 
and surveyor's compass, fitted him for control over 
the wills of other men, and rendered him capable of 
dealing with great affairs, when the time called for 
those qualities. As soon as Fort Du Quesne fell he 
resigned his commission and returned to Mount Ver- 
non. On January 6, 1759, he married Martha Dan- 
dridge Custis, the widow of Daniel Parke Custis, a 
Virginia gentleman of family and estate, and herself 
of a well-established Virginia family. Daniel Parke 
Custis was the grandson of John Parke. 



^O GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

By one of those curious turns of fortune, Mrs. 
Custis and her children — she had two by her first 
marriage — were possessed of the estate of the White 
House on the Pamunkey River, which had been origi- 
nally granted to William Claiborne, once Secretary of 
the province, to whom it had been given for a great 
victory over the Pamunkey Indians. He had been 
expelled from his legal possession of Kent Island, 
in Maryland, by the Calverts, and for eight genera- 
tions has been stigmatized as " rebel." '' Rebel " is 
one who has unsuccessfully resisted wrong. It always 
has been so, and always will be so. The defeated 
are always wrong, and there is no greater crime in 
the category of politics than failure. The estate 
of the White House passed from the Claibornes to 
the Parkes, to the Custises, to Washington's step- 
children, and through them to the Lees, where it 
now vests. 

The marriage took place at the little church near 
the White House, near Tunstall's station on the York 
River Railroad, from which the site of the original 
White House may still be seen embowered in trees 
on the south bank of the Pamunkey. The wedding 
was attended by Governor Fauquier and all the gen- 
try from Williamsburgh and the Northern Neck, with 
all the bravery of London coaches and new London 
liveries, and, as may well be imagined, was a social 
event of the first magnitude. After the wedding the 
newly wedded couple drove to Mount Vernon in their 
coach and four, bright with the Washington colors 
of red and white, and attended by a troop of 
friends — for a Virginian wedding is not a brief 
ceremonial ; it is a prolonged festivity, and every 
relative, friend, and well-wisher is expected to enjoy 



THE PLANTER'S LIFE AND MARRIAGE. 71 

the hospitalities of all the family within practicable 
distance. 

A man on horseback would be sent ahead, from 
stopping place to stopping place, to notify the cousin, 
or the uncle, or the aunt, living on the route, that the 
party would be there at such a time. And so they 
went, twenty, thirty, forty, or fifty kinspeople, with 
their horses, their dogs, and their servants, and with 
them came mirth and jollity, innocent and simple 
pleasures, enjoyed by healthy, robust natures, abso- 
lutely devoid of selfishness and intrigue. 

By day and by night the girls enjoyed themselves 
in dancing and flirting, and the men were hunting 
the deer or the fox, or shooting the Virginian par- 
tridge, or the ducks, geese, and swans with which the 
waters were thronged. At night the younger men 
courted the girls and the older ones played cards, 
until the day wound up with a supper of game, fish, 
oysters, ham, turkey, beef and mutton home-raised, 
with plentiful bowls of punch, apple toddy, and egg- 
nog in season. While these people drank freely and 
frequently, the life in the open air, the constant exer- 
cise indoors and out, prevented or cured excess, and 
drinking brought no ill effects, physically or morally. 
When the newly married couple were settled at 
Mount Vernon, they entertained, as was the custom 
of the country, frequently and generously. Colonel 
Washington understood that hospitality was one of 
the customs and the duties of his station, and he 
ordered his life to do his duty by his position, his 
wife, his servants, his property, and himself. 

The management of a great estate of necessity 
must require organization and order. Everything 
must be done in the proper way and at the proper 



^2 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



time, and a record must be kept of all the events of 
the little world — the microcosm of the plantation. 
Every marriage among the dependents must be duly- 
recorded in the Almanac or the Farm Book ; every 
birth must be put down ; every increase or diminu- 
tion of stock entered ; all crops raised and all ex- 
penses accounted for, and a diary kept preserving a 
statement of diurnal transactions. 

It has been the fashion to depict Washington as 
a young man of preternatural pomposity and grav- 
ity, of ponderous courtesy, and prodigious and elab- 
orate manners. But he certainly was neither. He 
was a Virginian gentleman of his epoch, with all the 
characteristics of his day and generation. He loved 
a glass of wine, a game of cards, a pretty girl, a 
good horse, a fast run after the hounds, and a rat- 
tling rush through the woods after the deer — and he 
loved these animal pleasures intensely. He was 
grave and decorous in deportment — so was every 
gentleman ; he was careful and painstaking about 
his property affairs — so were many heads of fami- 
lies. But he was absolutely and perfectly self con- 
trolled. He never let go his hand on himself for an 
instant. Several times during his life the fiery tem- 
per got away from the hand of iron — as with the 
Connecticut colonels at New York, with Charles Lee 
at Monmouth or with Hamilton at Philadelphia; but 
generally the control of his strong nature was entire- 
ly unshaken. 

The government of a plantation was like the 
discipline of a regiment. Without firmness, intelli- 
gence, and order everything goes to pieces ; and what 
might with proper direction and control be made to 
accomplish useful purposes, becomes a broken, dis- 



THE PLANTER'S LIFE AND MARRIAGE. 73 

arranged machine, with every part misfitting and out 
of order. The estate of Mount Vernon was no such 
mismanaged organization. Its master and mistress 
were both capable, courageous, and conscientious 
people, who did their duty most fairly and fully by 
themselves, their men-servants and their maid-serv- 
ants, their oxen and their asses, and everything that 
was theirs. 

Colonel Washington was the representative of 
Fairfax County in the House of Burgesses at Wil- 
liamsburgh, and a vestryman of Truro Parish on the 
Potomac. As vestryman, he did his part toward 
overseeing the comfort of his neighbors by giving 
them good roads, and administering proper police 
regulations against the roaming of servants from 
plantations after nightfall. 

When he attended the House of Burgesses, soon 
after his marriage, Mr. Speaker Robinson, says tra- 
dition, upon calling the House to order, took oc- 
casion to thank " the gentleman from Fairfax for 
his service to Virginia " ; and the gentleman from 
Fairfax, rising in his seat to make his acknowledg- 
ments, was so overcome with bashfulness that he 
could not speak. Whereupon the Speaker called out, 
" Take your seat, Mr. Washington ; your modesty 
excels your valor, and that exceeds the power of 
language to express." 

Like many of the demigod myths and fables of 
Washington, this story smacks of the incredible. 
In the first place, those people at that time, as now, 
were not inclined or partial to dramatic perform- 
ances by themselves. Among the Virginians there 
has never been the slightest tendency toward gush. 
With the deepest feeling of love or resentment, of 



74 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



devotion or of hatred, they never make public dem- 
onstrations of them. Pickett's men marched up the 
slope at Gettysburg without a cheer, right into the 
jaws of death. 

And, further, the Speaker of the House of Bur- 
gesses was an experienced and well-read parliamen- 
tary lawyer, and he knew that for the Speaker to 
compliment or reprimand a member in his place was 
one of the highest prerogatives of the House, and 
could only be done by express authority of the 
House. When, therefore, the Speaker by order of the 
House presented its thanks to Colonel Washington, 
the dignified and becoming thing for Colonel Wash- 
ington to do was to rise in his place, bow to the 
Speaker, and take his seat as he did. The idea of 
his attempting to "answer back " originated in an- 
other latitude — never among Virginians. 

Everywhere in Virginia he was of the first repu- 
tation and of the highest influence. One of the 
local stories is that, the parish requiring a new 
church, the question was much debated whether it 
should be located at a more central place, or the 
ancient one preserved. George Mason, one of the 
vestry, was ardent, enthusiastic, and eloquent in 
urging them to stand by the old landmarks, con- 
secrated by the ashes of their worthy ancestors and 
sacred to all the memories of life, marriage, birth, 
and death. 

Colonel Washington replied by producing a plat 
of the parish, drawn by himself with his well-known 
accuracy, on which every road was laid down and 
the house of every gentleman was marked, and 
which showed that the new location advocated by 
him was more convenient to every member of the 



THE PLANTER'S LIFE AND MARRIAGE. 75 

parish, and that the old one was exceedingly inac- 
cessible. The parochial meeting decided in favor of 
the new location and the plat. George Mason put 
on his hat and stalked out of the meeting, saying in 
not smothered tones, "That's what gentlemen get 
for engaging in debate with a d— d surveyor ! " But 
notwithstanding this little tiff, the owners of Gunston 
Hall and of Mount Vernon had the highest respect 
and warmest affection for each other. 

Mason was much the older man, a scholar and 
a student rather than a man of affairs. He re- 
garded his young neighbor, soldier-planter, manager 
of the Ohio Company, projector of the transconti- 
nental water line by the Potomac, the Monongahela, 
the Ohio, and the Wabash to the Lakes, with the 
respect and admiration with which the man of ideas 
looks upon the man of affairs; while Washington 
revered the older man with the veneration with 
which the youth with life and the world before him 
regards the sage who lives in the past. 

Mason was well known in the Dominion as a man 
with the highest ideals of duty and of character, of 
vigorous intellect, a student of men and books. He 
was the author of the Bill of Rights of Virginia, 
wherein, following the example of his ancestors in 
the Petition of Right and the Bill of Rights, he fur- 
nished the precedent for all American common- 
wealths up to this time. It is unfortunate for pos- 
terity that he refused to participate in Continental 
politics. Elected to Congress, he declined to accept 
the place; and although he served in the Constitu- 
tional Convention, he failed to procure acceptance 
of his ideas by that body, as experience has proved, 
greatly to the injury of posterity. 



^6 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

When, following the lead of Virginia and Massa- 
chusetts, committees of correspondence were formed 
all over the country, county committees were organ- 
ized for the purpose of disseminating information 
and educating the people. The county meeting is 
the descendant of the folkmote, and is as old as the 
race. Whenever and wherever any attack has been 
made on the common right, the neighborhood meets 
in council for co-operation and organization. The 
county committees in England assumed the govern- 
ment of the counties in i64i-'45, disciplined the 
" disloyal," and made the disaffected contribute to 
the support of the common cause against the king. 

The very first movement of sedition and rebel- 
lion in America was made in the county committees 
and town meetings. In New England local govern- 
ment was administered by town meetings. In Vir- 
ginia and the South it was by the vestries, which 
met every month for the purpose of regulating the 
police affairs of the parish. 

The first step in rebellion was to substitute 
county committees for vestries, so that the whole 
posse coinitatus^ the entire power of the county, 
might be centralized and wielded by one authority. 
The meeting of Fairfax County was presided over 
by Colonel Washington, of Mount Vernon, and 
adopted a declaration of the right of the people of 
each province to govern themselves, a protest against 
the vindictive treatment of Massachusetts, and a rec- 
ommendation that the Continental Congress should 
forward a petition and remonstrance to the king, and 
pray him to reflect " that from the king there was 
but one appeal." 

No gentleman of Washington's position in the 



THE PLANTER'S LIFE AND MARRL\GE. ;; 

community could afford to threaten or bluster. The 
language of the vestries and county meetings in 
Maryland and Virginia was calm, clear, and positive. 
They said exactly what they intended to say— no 
more, no less—" From the king but one appeal." 
What was that ? The appeal which their ancestors 
had made against John, against Charles I, against 
James II— an appeal to the God of battle ! 

That was the alternative presented by the Eng- 
lish on Chesapeake to the British beyond sea— an ad- 
mission of the right to govern themselves as they saw 
fit, forever and forever, or war ! Directly after the 
passage of the Fairfax resolutions. Colonel Washing- 
ton set out for Williamsburg to attend to his duties 
in the House of Burgesses. 

That body promptly backed the county meetings, 
called a Continental Congress to meet in Philadel- 
phia, and chose six delegates to it, of whom Wash- 
ington was one. In the discussion as to measures to 
be taken for the support of Massachusetts in the 
position she had taken, and the relief of Boston 
from the attack made on her liberties by the British, 
he said : " If need be, I will raise one thousand men, 
subsist them at my own expense, and march them to 
the relief of Boston." 

And he could have done so by the raising of his 
hand. " Rally to Colonel Washington ! " would have 
been the slogan. Up the Potomac to Fort Cumber- 
land, across the mountains to Fort Pitt, down the 
Ohio to the Kanawha, up the Kanawha to the Gauley, 
the word would have passed by fleet runners, and the 
hunters under Michael Cresap and Mordecai Gist 
would have flocked to him over the Blue Mountains, 
down the river valleys, up from tide water in Mary- 



78 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

land and Virginia, and twenty days would have given 
him more than one thousand men such as General 
Morgan afterward led at Saratoga or Lord Stirling 
at Long Island. He was promptly in his place in 
Philadelphia at the opening of Congress. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION. 

The failure of the Americans to adequately sup- 
port with men and money the campaigns against the 
French in Canada created the idea at home that 
proper means should be taken to compel them to do 
so. It was decided that they could not be trusted 
to raise money by taxing themselves to support im- 
perial objects, and therefore it was necessary to de- 
vise methods by which they could be made to do 
their duty to the empire. The method proposed 
was by imperial taxation, imposed by the imperial 
Parliament. 

In the Parliament America was not represented, 
and it was perhaps impracticable to grant the pro- 
vincials representation there. Such a measure was 
suggested, considered, and rejected. The plainest, 
simplest form of taxation, and one which was fa- 
miliar to the English, was to require all legal pro- 
cess, papers, conveyances, and wills to be written on 
stamped paper which was supplied by the Govern- 
ment. This form of taxation does not incommode 
the great body of the people, but touches mainly 
the class which deals with purchase and sale, with 
exchange, with transactions in money, and with the 
business of the people. But, like all taxation, it dis- 
tributes itself through the entire community, and 



8o GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

falls equally on all property and on every class. It 
had been in force in England for generations, and 
was acquiesced in as just, equal, and convenient. 

The idea of a central government for the New 
England in America had been conceived and dis- 
cussed by statesmen on either side of the Atlantic 
long before the pressure of New France brought 
the question of continental union up for decision. 
As far back as 1701, Robert Livingston, of New 
York, had suggested that all the colonies should be 
united under one government; and, in 1752, Lieu- 
tenant-Governor Dinwiddle, of Virginia, urged upon 
the Lords of Trade the establishment of two separate 
confederacies in the North and South. It was agreed 
on all hands that concentration of the resources of 
all the colonies was necessary for the common de- 
fense ; but it was with equal unanimity that each 
colony claimed the sole right to regulate all of its 
internal affairs. 

In 1754 the impending war with France brought 
this question to a decision, and several of the royal 
governors, upon the recommendation of the Earl of 
Holdernesse, Secretary of State, called a congress of 
all the colonies to be held at Albany. The object 
was to secure co-operation of the colonies against the 
French and the alliance of the Indian tribes, and 
thus divide the hereditary enemies of the English in 
America, and also to prepare and propose for adop- 
tion some plan of confederation which would be ac- 
cepted by all the colonies. Only seven out of the 
thirteen sent delegates — New Hampshire, Massa- 
chusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, 
Pennsylvania, and Maryland. 

On the 4th of July, 1754, this congress adopted 



THE BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION. 8 1 

a plan of union proposed by Benjamin Franklin, a 
deputy from Pennsylvania. This plan provided 
that a Federal Grand Council should meet every 
year at Philadelphia, to be composed of " members " 
from each colony, proportioned to its military 
strength, which was to elect its own officers. The 
Grand Council was to be elected by the General 
Assembly of each colony selecting "members of 
the Council " to which the colony was entitled. The 
plan is particular to designate them ''members of 
the Council," and nowhere " representatives, dele- 
gates, or deputies," so carefully was it guarded from 
possible inference from designations or words. 
After the first term, " members " were to be selected 
for three years, proportioned to taxes paid into the 
common fund. 

The government was to be administered by a 
president-general to be appointed by the Crown, who 
was to appoint all military officers subject to the 
confirmation of the Grand Council and to have a 
veto on its acts. The Grand Council was to have 
entire control over the questions of peace and war, 
defense against and trade with the Indians. As to 
Continental matters, it could raise armies and im- 
pose taxes. The plan utterly failed, and was no- 
where received with favor, except by Governor Shir- 
ley, of Massachusetts. Neither to the provincial 
nor to the home government was it acceptable. But 
notwithstanding this futile attempt at union the fact 
was as imperative as ever. 

The French in Canada barely exceeded fifty thou- 
sand souls — men, women, and children ; the English 
on the Atlantic numbered nearly eleven hundred 
thousand; but the French, scattered over a wide 



82 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

territory, were controlled by one will and wielded by 
one arm — a governor, always a soldier ; while the 
English were divided into thirteen separate govern- 
ments, each independent of all the rest, and only 
connected by the ties of common blood, laws, race, 
and language. Thus the first movement for a Con- 
tinental union for defense against the Indians and 
Roman Catholics failed ; but the germ of the move- 
ment was planted, and as soon as necessity arose 
for united action, co-operation was had. 

When the Stamp Act was passed, in 1765, Massa- 
chusetts promptly called a Congress to meet at New 
York, the headquarters of the British army in Amer- 
ica. There the deputies from nine colonies out of 
the thirteen met, each colony having an equal vote. 
They were from Massachusetts, South Carolina, 
Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Delaware, 
Maryland, New Jersey, and New York. The Gov- 
ernor of Virginia prevented that province from being 
represented by refusing to convoke the General As- 
sembly, and by executive influence New Hampshire, 
North Carolina, and Georgia were also unrepresent- 
ed. But the people everywhere were in full accord 
with the sentiment of resistance to the illegal act of 
government. 

This Congress, under the lead of Christopher 
Gadsden, of South Carolina, asserted in moderate but 
positive terms that the English in America were en- 
titled to all the essential and common rights of Eng- 
lishmen at home. " We should stand," said Gads- 
den, "' upon the broad common ground of those natu- 
ral rights that we all know and feel as men, and as 
the descendants of Englishmen." 

This was the keynote, this the general feeling 



THE BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION. 83 

through all the colonies, " that we are Englishmen," 
and entitled to equal rights with Englishmen at 
home, greatest and chiefest of which was the right to 
enforce, obtain, and defend those rights, with arms, 
at the expense of life, blood, and fortune. The pure- 
blooded race of English in New England and on the 
Chesapeake were unanimous for resistance in arms. 
The mixed population of New York, New Jersey, 
and Pennsylvania were neither unanimous nor deter- 
mined on such a course. In North Carolina the 
English were for resistance, and the Scotch High- 
landers, the representatives of the Jacobite feeling, 
many of whom were fugitives from Culloden, were 
zealous in the support of the House of Hanover, for 
the overthrow of which they had given fortune, 
blood, and native land. But they held themselves 
bound by their parol and their oath of allegiance, 
and the bloodiest conflicts of the Revolution were to 
take place between the friends and kinsmen of Flora 
McDonald in North Carolina, where she lived, and the 
descendants of the English who fought them or their 
ancestors in 1715 and 1745. The Irish everywhere 
were prompt for rebellion, and the Roman Catholics, 
principal of whom were the great landholders and 
leaders of Maryland, were firm in defense of their 
rights as Englishmen. 

There has never been a day in which the English 
Roman Catholic has not been clear in claiming 
hereditary rights and courageous in defending them. 
Whether under Lord Howard of Effingham, against 
Medina-Sidonia, and Guise, and the Grand Armada, 
or against the Scotch irruptions under the Stuarts, 
or against threats of invasion by Napoleon, when- 
ever and wherever the rights of Englishmen have 
7 



84 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

been threatened or the integrity of the realm en- 
dangered, the English Roman Catholics have been 
foremost in defense of them. 

The ultimate consequences of the Braddock cam- 
paign, therefore, were to relieve the colonies from the 
pressure of threats of invasion from the French in 
the North and the Spaniard in the South, and to im- 
pel them toward Continental union to defend them- 
selves from the inroads of the Indians from the 
West and the English from the East. 

The rebellion of 1775, the Revolution of i776-'8i, 
were the logical consequences of Braddock's defeat, 
which made the conquest of Canada, or the loss of 
North America, the sole alternatives to the English 
nation, and which produced the supreme effort which 
resulted in the subjection of the continent to the 
English, and, as a consequence of that, the independ- 
ence of the English in America, of the English be- 
yond sea. 

It was just and proper that the English in Amer- 
ica should provide means and men for their own de- 
fense. They had done so from the first settlement, 
raising and subsisting their own troops ; but they had 
done so by their own legislatures, themselves being 
judges of what was necessary and proper to be done. 
The taxing power was retained in their own hands. 
When, therefore, the British ministry proposed in 
Parliament to raise funds for the common defense 
by imposing a stamp tax on the colonies, the propo- 
sition was met by indignant protest all the way from 
Boston to Savannah. 

Washington, at Mount Vernon, engaged in the 
supervision of his plantation, his family, and his 
servants, was deeply impressed with the prodigious 



THE BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION. 



85 



importance of the proposition. His neighbor, 
George Mason, of Gunston Hall, the profoundest 
political thinker of his generation in Virginia, thor- 
oughly informed as to history, and especially the his- 
tory of the English race and its reiterated struggle 
in arms against unrestrained absolute power of gov- 
ernment, thoroughly sympathized with him. 

He demonstrated to the self-contained soldier- 
planter the inevitable consequences of yielding to 
the first encroachment of power on liberty, and that 
only two courses were possible — prompt and early re- 
sistance or abject submission. And he foresaw that 
resistance meant separation. Freed from the threat 
of the French and the Spaniard, abundantly able to 
deal with the Indian, he knew that when once the 
issue was joined the provincials would promptly vin- 
dicate their ability to meet the British regulars in 
the field, and the colonies their capacity for govern- 
ing themselves, and that thereafter it would be im- 
possible to reconcile them to subordination to the 
British Parliament. 

Washington was, before everything, a Virginian ; 
but he was an Englishman as well. The Braddock 
campaign had emancipated him from that provincial- 
ism which exaggerated all the high characteristics of 
the home people, and he appreciated them at their 
fair value. He considered the Virginian Englishman 
the equal in every way of the Briton at home. The 
Stamp Act, therefore, shocked him, and the repeal of 
the law, with the reservation of the power and right 
of Parliament to tax the American colonists, filled 
him with gloomy forebodings. 

He did not want a separation from friends and 
kindred at home. He was not m favor of secession, 



86 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

and it was not until flagrant war demanded all the 
assistance that could be brought to support it that 
he consented to the Declaration of Independence. 
He was a member of the House of Burgesses of 
Virginia, from which, under the lead of Patrick 
Henry, came the first defiance of the British Parlia- 
ment and the first assertion of the principle on which 
resistance to it was to rest. " The taxation of the 
people by themselves, or by persons chosen to repre- 
sent them, ... is the distinguishing characteristic of 
British freedom, without which the Constitution can 
not exist," was the declaration of Henry's resolutions 
passed by the House. They further declared that 
any attempt to vest the power of taxation in any 
other body than the Colonial Assembly was a menace 
to British no less than to American freedom; that 
the people of Virginia were not bound to obey any 
law enacted in disregard of these fundamental princi- 
ples ; and that any one who should maintain the con- 
trary should be regarded as a public enemy. 

But, looking back over the century and a quarter 
that has intervened, it is still impossible to under- 
stand the utter fatuity which controlled the British 
Cabinet in the twenty years that passed before the 
Declaration of Independence. Deep down imbedded 
in the heart of the race, from its emigration from 
Germany to the British Isle, was a conviction that 
no man should be deprived of life, liberty, or prop- 
erty except by the judgment of his peers and the 
law of the land. His peers were his neighbors im- 
paneled into a jury of twelve men, who, sitting in 
judgment, administered justice in the light of his 
life, his character, and his career, more or less known 
to them. 



THE BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION. 



87 



In the reign of Charles II a law had been passed 
to enforce revenue laws — that when smuggled goods 
were suspected to be concealed in any hous«e, a 
writ of assistance might be issued from the ad- 
miralty, commanding the marshal to search all sus- 
pected places and seize all suspected goods and ar- 
rest all suspected persons, and, if necessary, to sum- 
mon to his assistance such force as might be in his 
judgment necessary. An act of William III granted 
to revenue officers in America all the powers they 
were entitled to in England. In addition, an act was 
passed to preserve timber for the royal navy, and 
many trees were blazed and marked with the broad 
arrow in the forests of Maine, the two Carolinas, 
and Georgia, and thus dedicated to the use of the 
navy. Any trespass on this royal preserve was pun- 
ished in the admiralty by stripes, fine, and impris- 
onment. 

By the Statute of Treasons of Henry VIII, all 
treasons committed anywhere under the British do- 
minion were triable in England. On the charge that 
American juries could not be relied on to convict 
their fellow-subjects for violation of revenue laws, 
the old statutes of Henry VIII and Charles II were 
revived to secure convictions and deprive them of 
trial by jury. All ordinary offenses against the rev- 
enue laws were triable by one judge, without a jury, 
in admiralty. All extraordinary offenders were to 
be deported to England and tried by a jury, when 
conviction was sure. Thus the right to tax them- 
selves, and the right to trial by a jury of their neigh- 
bors, were alike denied by the British Government to 
the provincials. The writ of assistance authorized 
the marshal to search every suspected place for proof 



88 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

of suspected crime. It laid every house open to the 
menials of the admiralty. His house was no longer 
a man's castle, but was open on demand to any offi- 
cer of the Admiralty Court. 

The attempt to extend the admiralty jurisdiction, 
and thus deprive freeborn Englishmen of their 
hereditary right of trial by jury, the assertion of the 
power of the writs of assistance, which were general 
warrants authorized to search all suspected places, 
seize all suspected goods, and arrest all suspected 
persons, roused the people like a fire-bell by night, 
and the coast, from Maine to the Gulf of Mexico, 
blazed with bonfires burning in effigy the obnoxious 
admiralty judges and minions who sought to perpe- 
trate this outrage on the freeborn. 

The controversy between the common law and 
the admiralty courts had raged in England from 
the time when the Count of the Saxon shore was 
necessarily vested with authority to call out all the 
power of the sea and land to resist invasion by 
Saxon, or Dane, or Norseman ; and only as the power 
of the central government of king, lords, and 
commons was crystallized into regular forms and 
developed into governing force to establish security 
for home, life, and property, were the King's courts 
of sufficient authority to protect the King's subjects 
against the usurpations and aggressions of the ad- 
miralty ; and it was not until the time of Lord Coke 
that his rugged English brain and courage estab- 
lished on immutable foundations the principle that 
the jurisdiction of the admiralty was bounded by the 
tide, and controlled only the doings of men on the 
great deep. 

So deeply seated is this desire of power to ex- 



THE BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION. 89 

tend itself on the one side, and the desire of the 
freeborn to resist usurpation on the other, that the 
struggle between the admiralty and the common 
right has been continued from the colonies to the 
States, until the fourth generation after the Declara- 
tion of Independence has not been able sufficiently 
to check or bridle the admiralty jurisdiction within 
the limits established by Lord Coke. 

The use of stamps was so universally repudiated, 
the law requiring the use of them so generally ig- 
nored, that they passed out of existence and made 
no sign. The stamp officers everywhere were forced 
to resign their offices, and the stamps were burnt or 
reshipped home. The stamp officer for Annapolis 
in Maryland escaped to New York, where, under the 
guns of the British fleet and the protection of the 
British army, he hoped to live in peace. But the 
irate Marylanders pursued him there, and a com- 
mittee from Annapolis forced him, at the point of 
the sword, to resign his place. The courts of Mary- 
land required public and private business to be tran- 
sacted without stamps, and the bar of Charleston, 
South Carolina, unanimously signed an application 
to the court that the law should be ignored in that 
jurisdiction, because it was manifestly contrary to 
the fundamental rights of Englishmen. 

The repeal of the Stamp Act amounted to noth- 
ing. It reasserted the right of Parliament to tax 
the colonies, and while experience had just proved 
that this right of taxation would never produce rev- 
enue, for it could not be enforced, the insistence on 
this theoretical right gave grave offense to the Eng- 
lish in America. It is the peculiarity of the race 
that they feel ideas like facts, and the assertion of 



90 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



an obnoxious principle is with them as bad as the 
enforcement of it. 

The levy of a few shillings ship-money on John 
Hampden did not inconvenience him, nor did it 
threaten his neighbors, but the assertion of the right 
to take his property without his consent implied the 
right to take the property of any man for any pur- 
pose, and thus no man's home was safe, and he held 
everything at the pleasure of the King. On that 
issue the English took arms, overthrew a dynasty, 
and after many battles on many bloody fields have 
established a government where security for life, lib- 
erty, and property has never been exceeded in the 
history of the world. 

In 1761 the revenue officer of Boston applied to 
Chief-Justice Hutchinson for a writ of assistance — 
that is, a general warrant to search all suspected 
places for all suspected goods and persons, specifying 
none of them. James Otis appeared before the court 
as counsel for the people, and with fiery eloquence 
demonstrated that general warrants were contrary 
to the Constitution, and that no one was bound to 
respect them. He did not point out the logical con- 
sequence — the common sense of the people did that 
— that no man could interfere with any other man's 
rights of person or property without the authority 
of the law, and that whoever did so, without legal 
warrant, was a trespasser, and might legally be re- 
sisted by force. 

If a private trespass might thus be met by force — 
and that has been a maxim of the common law from 
the time "beyond which the memory of man run- 
neth not " — so much the more was it the duty of 
the loyal subject as of the free citizen to take 



THE BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION. 



91 



arms to resist trespass on the common right, the 
right of all men to life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness. The British Administration withdrew the 
stamp tax. It cost more to collect it than it could 
be made to yield, but it put in a " continual claim " 
of the right to tax the provincials, and arranged to 
enforce the regulations of trade more rigorously. 

Under the British navigation acts — remnant of 
the Commonwealth and of Cromwell's policy — all 
trade with the colonies was required to be carried 
on through home ports in British bottoms. Thus 
sugar from Jamaica to Maryland must first be 
shipped to Bristol or London or Portsmouth in Brit- 
ish ships, and thence to the James River or the Po- 
tomac. It was this violation of the natural laws of 
trade that forced the traders of New England, who 
flew as free and fearless sails as any Viking under 
the raven flag, to defy the law and run sugar into 
home ports. 

But, as population increased in the intervening 
century, the navigation acts operated in unforeseen 
ways, and imposed unheard-of burdens on the people. 
In York, Pennsylvania, there was a manufactory of 
beaver hats, which were needed in Maryland. They 
could not be wagoned to Baltimore, forty miles off, 
because direct trade between the colonies was for- 
bidden. The Virginians on the Rappahannock pro- 
duced a high quality of pig iron, which was needed 
in Baltimore and elsewhere, to be manufactured into 
plows, axes, and hoes. But the same law prevented 
the direct trade. And, ten thousand times worse, 
from the minute either hats or iron started on their 
roundabout journey to the consumer, they became 
subject to admiralty law and were deprived of the 



92 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



right to a trial by jury. A dozen hats smuggled 
across the border rendered every house liable to 
search, every box to seizure, and every person to 
arrest. Every province was surrounded by an iron 
wall of protection ; interstate trade was absolutely 
prohibited, and the interchange of products among 
neighbors was forbidden. 

Under natural conditions, the great fisheries of 
the Chesapeake would have been the source of untold 
prosperity to their possessors and their neighbors. 
Their rich yield could have been exchanged for the 
hats, cloths, leather, and industrial products of 
Pennsylvania, and both sides made a profit and pros- 
pered. But the British intellect is mcapable of tak- 
ing in the idea of the equality of other men. 

Though the provincials were in the main of their 
own blood, they never did understand, never could 
appreciate, the fact that societies are born, grow, 
develop, and arrive at maturity precisely as men do, 
and, as men require different treatment from boys, so 
mature provinces occupy different positions in the 
world from infant colonies. It is this incapacity 
that is now risking the British hold on her colonies, 
and which will certainly lose her Canada and Aus- 
tralasia, unless she recognizes them as her equals and 
associates with them on terms of equal rights. 

The pretensions of the admiralty were steadily 
resisted. James Otis's attack on general search 
warrants, or writs of assistance, was followed up in 
every other colony except Pennsylvania, New Jersey, 
and New York. Perhaps the inducements of trade 
were more dominating in those colonies, and peace 
and thrift were preferred to the tempestuous struggle 
of civil war for the preservation of hereditary rights. 



THE BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION. 



93 



During the discussions about the stamp tax, the 
provincial governors had represented to the Lords 
of Trade that, while the Americans would resist 
every attempt at direct taxation, they would be 
satisfied with indirect contributions to the imperial 
treasury for the common defense, raised by means of 
regulations of trade — tariff taxes, as we now under- 
stand them. Accordingly, the Administration, under 
the lead of Charles Townsend, Chancellor of the Ex- 
chequer, imposed a tax on glass, paper, lead, paints, 
colors, and tea, imported into the colonies. This 
act was to be enforced by a board of revenue com- 
missioners for the whole country, to sit at Boston, and 
general writs of assistance were expressly authorized. 
That is, that a board at Boston was to issue a gen- 
eral warrant to search all houses in Maryland, to 
seize all property, and to arrest all persons that the 
revenue collector for the district chose to search, 
seize, and arrest. 

The King was to appoint governors and judges 
and create a general civil list, and grant pensions in 
every colony, all of which were to be paid out of 
the fund raised by tariff taxation ; that is, that the 
people were to be deprived of all influence over 
their executive and judicial officers, as their legis- 
latures were superseded by the imperial Parliament, 
and they were to be delivered into the hands of the 
Crown, with life, liberty, and property absolutely at 
its disposal, utterly stripped of their right of trial by 
jury. 

No such scheme of absolutism was ever applied 
to people of English blood before. Not Strafford, in 
his wildest dreams of "thorough," ever imagined 
such a plan of subjugating a freeborn people to 



94 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



absolute authority. The tariff on imports was 
promptly met by the colonists by agreements among 
themselves not to import anything from home, or pur- 
chase or use anything imported. The Townsend 
Tariff Act was passed in 1767, but so fierce was the 
opposition to it, that in 1769 Parliament repealed all 
except the duty on tea. 

Tea was probably selected because a tax on it 
would be the least annoying, and would touch fewer 
people than any other tax whatever. The retention 
of it would assert the right of Parliament to tax the 
colonies. The tax would not produce over three 
hundred pounds ; and as tea was unknown to the 
great mass of the people, and used only by the few 
rich and traveled families, it was supposed that a 
tax on it would pass unnoticed, and the principle as- 
serted be universally acquiesced in because it in- 
convenienced nobody. So little was the use of tea 
known, that tradition says that a gentleman in Vir- 
ginia gave his overseer a pound of tea as a present 
to his wife, who, thinking it was some new-fashioned 
"greens," promptly boiled the whole of it in a pot 
with a big ham ! 

At this period few people anywhere meditated se- 
cession, and independence of the home government. 
It was dimly crystallizing in the mind of Patrick 
Henry, but without definite form. Samuel Adams, 
of Massachusetts, claimed that from the passage of 
the Declaratory Act asserting the omnipotence of 
Parliament, he became fixed in purpose and clear 
in intention to produce a complete separation, as the 
only defense from the constant intermeddling of the 
mother country with the affairs and domestic rights 
of the provincials. But George Mason, George 



THE BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION. 95 

Washington, Richard Henry Lee, of Virginia, Thomas 
Johnson and Charles Carroll, of Maryland, Richard 
Caswell, of North Carolina, and Christopher Gads- 
den and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, of South 
Carolina, all patriotic Englishmen, all devoted to the 
traditions and the institutions of " home," the birth- 
place and grave of their ancestors for generations, 
had no desire for separation, and certainly no inten- 
tion to prepare for it. 

George Mason was of too philosophic a mind not 
to understand that a combination by people to resist 
law— law enacted with all the guarantees, securities, 
forms, and sanctions ever thrown around any law — 
on the vague ground that such a law was no law, 
because contrary to common right and the fundamen- 
tal principles of justice, Mason was too well read in 
history, and too sagacious, not to appreciate that the 
first step was being taken to arouse resistance to 
government ; that such rebellion was very different 
from the rebellion against Charles I and the Star 
Chamber, and that against James II, when the re- 
sult of resistance must of necessity be not a revolu- 
tion in the principles, but a change in the adminis- 
trators, of government. 

The combination against law, beginning with the 
repudiation of the Stamp Act, followed by the non- 
importation agreement, organized in provincial con- 
gresses, could only result in absolute defeat and sub- 
jection to the will of Great Britain, when the colo- 
nies would be governed by military law applied by 
soldiers, as the Southern States were while under the 
reconstruction governments, or in complete success, 
which would secure the colonies absolute control of 
their own destinies, and this, once secured, must result 



96 



GENERAL WASFIINGTON. 



in independence, for the victor never yet has submit- 
ted to the sway of the vanquished. 

But while a few prophetic and enthusiastic minds 
and hearts, aflame with the divine frenzy of pas- 
sion, of sentiment, of devotion to high ideals, felt 
that the issue was between subjugation and slavery 
or liberty and independence, the great mass of the 
property holders, the churchmen, the landholders? 
were faithful in their love of home and kin, and 
had not the remotest idea that they were being led 
in the path of a separation, to be achieved at the ex- 
pense of so many tears and lives and so much blood 
and property. 

The tariff on tea, therefore, though it touched no- 
body or annoyed any one, was taken by the leaders 
North and South to be more insidious and more 
dangerous than an open notorious violation of com- 
mon right. A tax levied and collected by the King's 
tax-gatherer from door to door would have aroused 
the people like the fiery cross of Clan-Alpin, and 
the representative of the royal authority would have 
been booted from the mountains to the sea. But in 
order to confuse the question of right, the import 
duty paid by the East India Company on tea im- 
ported into England was remitted to the company 
on tea exported to America, so that the price of tea, 
with Townsend's tariff on it, was no greater than be- 
fore it was imposed. 

Tea was made the test, and when, in the fall of 
1773, vessels loaded with tea were sent to Boston, 
New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston, prepara- 
tions were made to prevent the landing of the car- 
goes. At Boston, after a public meeting called to pre- 
vent the landing of the tea, a party of men, disguised 



THE BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION, ^j 

as Indians, at night threw the tea overboard in the 
harbor. At Charleston the tea was landed, but com- 
pelled to be stored in damp cellars, where it was 
speedily destroyed by moid. 

But at Annapolis the boldness of the rebels sur- 
passed all experience. On the arrival of the ship Peg- 
gy Stewart in that port, consigned to her owner, one 
Stewart, a Scotch factor, the Whig Club of Anne 
Arundel County were convened by their president, 
Dr. Charles Alexander Warfield, and with hatbands 
inscribed " Liberty or Death," they rode on Annapolis, 
and in open day gave Stewart the alternative of be- 
ing hung before his own door or of firing his own 
ship with his own hand. He naturally chose the 
latter, and the Peggy Stewart was burned at her wharf 
in open day, by the direction of the principal people 
of the county, without disguise, who acted openly, 
and assumed the responsibility for their acts. 

The tax on tea was, therefore, as conspicuous a 
failure as that on stamps had been, and it was aban- 
doned. But Boston was required to pay for the tea 
destroyed by her mob, and did pay for it. A de- 
mand for payment on Maryland would have met with 
prompt refusal. Theirs was not the spirit to tempo- 
rize, nor to draw back from a position deliberately as- 
sumed. But while the commercial sense of Boston 
led it to seek to obviate the consequences of the acts 
of its people — extra-legal, illegal, or rebellious — the 
body of the people, when their spirits are aroused, 
never temporize. On any question of right or honor, 
of faith or trust, the mass of feeling, in the mass of 
free people, may always be counted on as being on 
the right side, as they understand it. 

And the people of Massachusetts were far above 



gS GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

the traders and business men of Boston in their 
standard of the rights of Englishmen, and their will- 
ingness to make sacrifice of property to maintain 
them, and their unselfish devotion and faith in the 
eternal truth and life of them. Boston was selected 
by the ministry at home for the experimentum in 
corpore vili. Her port was closed by act of Parlia- 
ment, and her commerce obliterated. Major-General 
Gage, who had commanded the Forty-fourth Regi- 
ment as Lieutenant Colonel in Dunbar's Brigade of 
the rear guard at the Battle of the Monongahela, was 
sent to restore order in Boston with four regiments 
of regulars. 

The provincial authorities would make no pro- 
vision for billeting the troops. The experience of 
James II in billeting troops on the people in time of 
peace was too recent for the royal governor or royal 
general to dare to billet troops on Boston, so they 
lived under canvas on Boston Common, all through 
a Boston winter. The unnecessary hardships to 
which the soldiers were exposed, their consequent 
rheumatism and pleurisy, were not calculated to 
beget or to cultivate good feeling between citizens 
and soldiers, and consequently there were collisions, 
attacks on single soldiers, or on detached parties of 
them, until at last, in an affray in open day, the sol- 
diers shot down several citizens who were leading 
the mob which was driving them into their quarters. 

This was called " the Boston Massacre." Six 
men lost their lives in it. It is a miracle that every 
red-coat in Boston was not shot down that night. 
There were plenty of old soldiers of Louisburgh and 
old sailors of Marblehead in Boston, and they could 
have wiped out the British garrison as completely as 



THE BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION, qq 

that other British garrison was wiped out at Delhi. 
But for self-control and prudence the men of New 
England are unsurpassed. Gage arrested the officer 
and his detachment who fired on the mob, and turned 
them over to the civil authority for trial. James Otis 
and John Adams defended them, and they were ac- 
quitted on the plea of self-defense. This remarkable 
though proper verdict may perhaps be explained on 
the ground of a healthy respect for General Gage's 
guns, and a reasonable doubt whether any other 
verdict would have been carried out. 

During the days of reconstruction, while Virginia 
was Military District No. i, a Federal sentinel shot 
and killed a citizen for not respecting his challenge 
on post. The man was doubtless amenable to the 
articles of war, but the commanding officer preferred 
to turn him over to the civil courts for trial and pun- 
ishment. He was defended by an ex-Confederate offi- 
cer. The Hustings court of the city of Richmond 
promptly acquitted him, on the ground that as a sol- 
dier he was bound to obey orders, and that the offi- 
cer who gave the order was responsible, if anybody 
was; and, further, that the officer of the guard was 
not subject to civil jurisdiction during the military 
occupation of a conquered territory. So the cool- 
ness and judgment of the Boston jury may have 
been tempered by some like considerations to those 
which controlled the Virginia court. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS — NEW ENGLAND IN 
THE WAR. 

On September 4, 1774, the first Continental Con- 
gress assembled at Philadelphia. Eleven colonies 
were there, North Carolina delegates not arriving un- 
til the i6th, and Georgia was not represented at all. 
Peyton Randolph, of Virginia, was chosen president, 
and their first resolution was to reassert and indorse the 
Massachusetts declaration that a king who violates 
the chartered rights of his people forfeits their al- 
legiance ; that an act of Parliament contrary to the 
common right was void, and ought to be disregarded. 
This was another way of asserting the duty of the 
people to resist invasion of their rights by arms. It 
was the first act of nullification in America. The 
Congress agreed upon and passed a declaration of 
rights which claimed for each colony the exclusive 
right of control over its police, its taxation, and its 
expenditure, echoing the sentiment of the Fairfax 
resolves, and sent out addresses to the King, to the 
people of Great Britain, and to the other British 
colonies in America. 

With the English race the appeal to reason has 
always preceded the appeal to force, but time and 
again in its history, resolves, remonstrances, and 
declarations have been backed by the sword in 



THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS. iqi 

manly hands. There was not unanimity in the desire 
for the accession of the Canadas, for twenty genera- 
tions of struggle with the Roman Catholic and the 
Frenchman at home or in America had left feelings 
not to be obliterated at once. 

But the desire for the purely English colonies of 
the Bermudas was strong, and it was not until long 
after, when experience had demonstrated that con- 
trol of the sea guaranteed possession of the islands 
to Great Britain, that the statesmen of the Continent 
gave up all hopes of their joining the Confederacy. 
In fact, the address to the people of Great Britain 
enumerated as one of the grievances for repair of 
which they appealed to their fellow-subjects at 
home, that the Quebec Act, regulating the govern- 
ment of Canada, guaranteed security to the Roman 
Catholic Church, its priests and property, and pro- 
tected them in the free exercise of their religion. 
Of course, when the Congress afterward sent com- 
missioners to Canada to solicit co-operation and 
union, with John Carroll, Provincial of the Society 
of Jesus in North America, at their head, the com- 
missioners were met by the solid opposition of the 
Roman Catholic Church, clergy and laity, and made 
an utter failure. 

Nothing further was done, but this meeting still 
further mingled the spirits of the different colonies 
into a medium which prepared crystallization. The 
personal association between John Adams, of Mas- 
sachusetts, Patrick Henry and Edmund Randolph, 
of Virginia, Thomas Johnson and Mathew Tilgh- 
man, of Maryland, and Christopher Gadsden, of 
South Carolina, in the daily intercourse of a month 
gave them better appreciation of the personalities 



102 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

which would be united in their undertaking of re- 
sistance, than correspondence of a year would have 
afforded. 

By the written word, ideas are expressed and im- 
parted ; by the spoken language, force, intelligence, 
sympathy, directness, manliness, are understood, and 
the controlling powers of life lie much more in per- 
sonal qualities than in intellectual ones. The fac- 
ulty of expression lessens the power of force of will. 
No great orator or philosopher ever was a great 
soldier, and a great soldier rarely is a great thinker. 
The sphere of physical action and intellectual effort 
lie in different planes. These are unlikely to cross. 
When they do, a phenomenon like Moses, or Alex- 
ander, or Napoleon Bonaparte is produced. 

Leaders of revolutions do not create them. They 
express in words, or in action, the common feeling, 
and are successful just in proportion as they faith- 
fully, accurately express the emotions which stir all 
hearts. Samuel Adams may have foreseen the ne- 
cessity for separation, Patrick Henry may have 
declared the duty of resistance by force, but neither 
created the idea of independence, nor originated 
that of revolution. 

The sentiment was in the hearts of the English 
in America. They felt that they had grown up ; that 
they were men, and had the right and duty to control 
their own destinies, and the logic of Nature marched 
with irresistible and inevitable steps to resistance 
and separation. General Gage had occupied Boston 
and sought to intimidate Massachusetts since the 
previous April, 1774, when he had been appointed 
military Governor of the colony, turned into a mili- 
tary district, just as Virginia was in 1867-1870. 



THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS. 103 

During the summer the colony nullified the act 
of Parliament known as the Regulating Act, which 
assumed to control the legislative power of the col- 
ony by vesting in the Governor appointed by the 
Crown the power to appoint councilors to the Gov- 
ernor, to hold during the pleasure of the appointing 
power and to be paid by it. 

Committees of correspondence were organized 
throughout the colony and with all other colonies, and 
careful provision of gunpowder and lead began to 
be made. On every village green the young men 
and boys began to be drilled by the old soldiers of 
Pepperell, Wolfe, and Prescott. During the winter 
Washington occupied himself in arranging his affairs 
for a long absence. He committed the Mount 
Vernon estate to the care of Battaille Muse, his old 
adjutant of Fort Necessity. In April, 1775, he at- 
tended the second Congress at Philadelphia. 

It has been remarked that he wore to the sessions 
of this Congress his uniform of a Virginia colonel of 
blue and buff, as significant that in his opinion the 
time for action had arrived. The uniform he did 
wear was of blue coat and scarlet waistcoat and 
breeches, as proved by Peale's portrait, and the rea- 
son he wore it is probably that it was the best suit 
he had. It had been made by a London tailor. The 
Articles of Nonimportation which he had signed, and 
of which he was a conscientious observer, had cut off 
supplies of appropriate dress from home, and the 
uniform of a man's rank was considered the dress 
suit for occasions of ceremony in the society to 
which he had been accustomed. 

The military preparations in Massachusetts had 
occasioned discussion as to the orgfanization of a 



104 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

Continental army, and it was the clearest policy to 
commit Virginia fully and completely to the move- 
ment of force. Consultations by correspondence 
were going on through the winter between the 
leaders in all the provinces as to the proper per- 
son to be placed in command. The only ones who 
could furnish soldiers of experience and reputation 
for command were Massachusetts and Virginia. 
While Massachusetts had Ward and Prescott, who 
had served against the French, Virginia had Andrew 
Lewis and Washington. 

Lewis, at the battle of Point Pleasant, with Vir- 
ginia militia alone — the veteran and seasoned rangers 
of the border — had defeated the allied forces of the 
Indians, shattered their power, and driven the de- 
moralized fugitives beyond the Ohio. But Thomas 
Johnson, of Maryland, was the neighbor and friend 
of Washington. He had been associated with him 
since 1762 in the Ohio Company, and in the great 
enterprise to secure a free water way from the head 
of tide on the Potomac, where Washington now 
stands, by the Potomac, the Monongahela, the Ohio, 
and the Wabash, to Lake Erie. Johnson, better than 
any man of his cotemporaries, knew the broadness 
of view, the grasp of mind, the tenacity of purpose, 
united with self-control, concentration, and phys- 
ical fortitude and endurance of Colonel Washing- 
ton. It may well have been, as John Adams claims, 
that he indicated the choice of Washington as com- 
mander in chief on account of his conspicuous posi- 
tion and the considerations of policy. Johnson, 
however, took the initiative, and on June 15, 1775, 
moved in the Congress that that body assume the 
responsibility for the army which the affair of Lex- 



THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS. 



[05 



ington had assembled before Boston, and that Colo- 
nel George Washington, of Virginia, be appointed to 
the command in chief. 

Johnson says that on going into the hall, on the 
morning of the isth, he met Adams and proposed to 
him the nomination of Colonel Washington for the 
supreme command, and that Adams turned off im- 
patiently, as if the subject were distasteful to him. 
Therefore the deputy from Maryland proceeded to 
make the motion which had been agreed upon. As 
soon as Colonel Washington's name was mentioned 
he withdrew from the hall, as was decorous and 
proper, and upon being informed of the passage of 
the resolution he resumed his place, where he was 
informed by the President of the action of the body. 

He at once arose and thanked his colleagues for 
the confidence they had reposed in him, assured 
them of his unfeigned diffidence as to his ability to 
justify their action, for he thought that there was 
another gentleman better qualified and more worthy 
of the great responsibility, and stated that, as no 
pecuniary inducement controlled him in the matter, 
he would receive no pay or allowances as attached 
to his place, but would keep an exact account of his 
expenses, which he would rely on the justice of Con- 
gress to reimburse. 

The habit of the Plantation Book, and the atten- 
tion to detail of every kind, stood him in good stead 
in the business of governing an army of ten thou- 
sand men in the field, as it had done a detachment 
of five hundred inferiors on a plantation ; and after 
the war was over the account of Washington's ex- 
penses, kept in his own handwriting, was submitted 
to Congress and the sum total reimbursed him. 



I06 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

These autograph accounts may still be seen among 
the archives of the United States at Washington. 
He never received a shilling of pay. Immediately 
on his appointment, without a moment's delay, he 
began to prepare for the field. He sent home to 
Mount Vernon for money and horses, and supplied 
his wardrobe for the campaign. He bought five 
saddle-horses, and sent his carriage and its horses 
back to Virginia. On June 23d he left Philadelphia 
on horseback to ride to Boston. He was escorted 
by the First City Troop — a troop of cavalry well 
mounted, well drilled, well equipped, and well offi- 
cered, consisting of the Jeunesse dore oi Philadelphia. 
He was accompanied by Generals Charles Lee and 
Philip Schuyler. Lee was a lieutenant colonel in 
the British army, but this did not prevent him from 
accepting the rank of major general in the Conti- 
nental army, third in rank to the commander in chief, 
Ward, of Massachusetts, being second. 

Twenty miles from Philadelphia they met the 
courier bringing the news of Bunker Hill. " Did the 
militia fight?" was the Virginian's first inquiry; and 
when it was made clear to him that they had held on 
to their rude earthworks with rifles and shotguns 
against the British bayonet, until their last cartridge 
was fired, and had been pushed out only after in- 
flicting a loss of thirty-three per cent on the regulars 
and suffering a loss of twenty-five per cent in their 
own ranks, he rode on, perfectly satisfied that lati- 
tude and climate had not modified or lessened that 
solid English pluck that had saved the routed, fren- 
ized fragments of the regulars on the Monongahela. 
He was everywhere welcomed with cordiality and 
distinction, for he represented chivalrous aid to kith 



THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS. 



107 



and kin in a cause in which they had not so close 
material interests. 

Washington arrived in Boston on July 2, 1775, 
and the next day assumed command of the army, 
displaying for the first time the Continental flag bear- 
ing the scarlet and white bars from the Washington 
arms, thirteen in number for the thirteen colonies, 
and in the union the red cross of England and of 
Scotland, of St. George and of St. Andrew, forming 
the Union Jack of Great Britain. Under this flag, 
emblematic of the united colonies and of their re- 
lation to the mother country. General Washington 
asserted the right of war in defense of hereditary 
rights and ancestral liberty. 

The army at Boston consisted of eleven thousand 
five hundred men from Massachusetts, two thousand 
three hundred from Connecticut, one thousand two 
hundred from New Hampshire, and one thousand 
from Rhode Island — sixteen thousand in all. They 
were the levy e7i masse of New England in response 
to the guns of Lexington, of farmers' sons, of city 
and town clerks, of the enthusiasm and ardor of 
the English of New England. They were sent by 
county committees, and town meetings, on all sorts 
of terms of enlistment, and on all kinds of promises 
of pay. They were armed with the old weapons of 
the Indian and French wars, and clothed with the 
products of their fathers' farms and their mothers' 
looms and fingers. In an outburst of enthusiasm, 
when aspiration and devotion to duty absorbs every 
energy and overwhelms egotism, selfishness, vanity, 
and self-assertion, push themselves to the front, 
assert control, and require to be repressed, as they 
always are repressed, by the stern reality of action. 



I08 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

In the radical democratic society of New Eng- 
land, where social distinctions had for generations 
been resented as remains of aristocracy, and where 
universal equality was recognized as the only rule of 
life, the military organization necessarily reflected 
the conditions from which it arose. The men elected 
their officers, from colonel to junior lieutenant, and 
in the inexperience of men, the result of youth and 
a country life, frequently made great mistakes in 
their selections. The Virginia soldier, accustomed 
to the discipline of the border, the campaign, and 
the plantation, found his army a mob, courageous, 
earnest, and ignorant. Very many of the officers of 
the line were utterly worthless. 

Cowardly, thieving braggarts, they were peculat- 
ing in the provisions and clothes sent from home to 
the boys in the field, and defrauding them of their 
pay. The commander in chief at once inspected his 
command, organized a staff, and made himself mas- 
ter of details. He broke two captains for cowardly 
behavior in the action at Bunker Hill, two captains 
for drawing more pay and provisions than they had 
men in their companies, and one for having been ab- 
sent from his post when the enemy appeared and 
burned a house just by it. In addition, he put under 
arrest and sent before a court-martial under charges, 
one colonel, one major, one captain, and two subal- 
terns. He set himself to stamp out selfishness and 
self-seeking, and to imbue his command with a high 
sense of patriotism, a love of liberty and of coun- 
try, and devotion to duty, as the vital forces which 
should control and direct every member of it, from 
the highest to the lowest. But among the officers 
were some of the highest merit. 



THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS. 



109 



Israel Putnam, Benedict Arnold, Nathanael 
Greene, Henry Knox, and John Stark were all there, 
whose names were afterward to become illustrious 
from great and distinguished service, the second un- 
happily infamous by an unparalleled act of treachery. 
During July Congress re-enforced him by the addi- 
tion of three thousand Virginian and Maryland 
troops under Morgan and Cresap — that Indian fighter 
who has come down to us unjustly branded with the 
murder of Logan's family, a crime with which he 
had absolutely no connection, and of which he was 
entirely guiltless. 

The summer was passed in drilling and organiz- 
ing the troops, and collecting ammunition. He sent 
a swift vessel to Bermuda to capture a cargo of 
powder there, which was done. He strengthened 
his lines around Boston. The lesson of Fort Neces- 
sity had been beneficial, and experience had taught 
him what immense advantage topographical position 
gives in war. Here he began to develop those great 
conceptions of conditions in which he excelled all 
men in America. From his youth accustomed to 
great distances, and to appreciate the advantage of 
grand operations as manager of the Ohio Company, 
he had, by personal observation and constant inter- 
course with scouts and traders for twenty years, ar- 
rived at Continental ideas of the strength and the im- 
portance of the *' back country," the Western lands. 

The Quebec Act had added the valley of the Ohio 
to Canada, and Washington was the first American 
thoroughly imbued with the fatalism of " manifest 
destiny." He understood, as no man else in America 
did understand, that civilization seeks and will ob- 
tain the nearest, easiest access to the sea — the com- 



no GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

mon highway of communication among nations in 
all ages — and that the people who in time must domi- 
nate the shores of the Great Lakes and banks of the 
rivers would seek their outlet to the sea by the flow- 
ing water, the St. Lawrence or the Mississippi, unless 
they were bound to the English on the Atlantic by 
short and easy means of access. 

New York was the vulnerable point of the con- 
federation. The capture of the line of Lake Cham- 
plain and the Hudson would separate New England 
and the South, and leave each section an easy victim 
to the British arms. The military instinct of the 
people had sent Benedict Arnold and Ethan Allen to 
capture Ticonderoga and Crown Point before the 
Congress at Philadelphia had moved in the direction 
of a Continental army, and the New Englanders had 
secured their communications with the South by seiz- 
ing the line of New York. 

As soon as his command was in any condition to 
work, Washington sent Montgomery by Ticonderoga 
to Montreal, and Arnold by the forests of Maine to 
Quebec, to force co-operation between Canada and 
the confederation, thereby relieving "the Western 
lands " from the pressure of Indian domination and 
Canadian influence. The conception was a grand 
one. Montgomery captured Montreal, and the cam- 
paign would have been a success save for one of 
those accidents which so often in war determine the 
event of a battle and the fate of a government. 
Montgomery was killed and Arnold wounded at the 
head ^f their respective storming parties at Quebec, 
and by these chances Canada was saved to Great 
Britain. 

Had Quebec been captured, Canadian deputies 



THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS. m 

would have been sent to the Continental Congress, 
and Canada would have been the fourteenth " free, 
sovereign, and independent State " acknowledged by 
the treaty of 1783. As it was, Canada sent two regi- 
ments to the Continental army, which were mus- 
tered into service as " Congress's Own." The death 
of Montgomery saved Canada to the British, and 
changed the course of history ; but the campaign 
originated by Washington will be carried out by 
some future generation of Americans, who will not 
permit the flanks of the great republic to be threat- 
ened forever. As the army became more soldierly 
and manageable, the commander in chief became 
more impatient for action. Armies are made for 
fighting, and soldiers to be killed, and long periods 
of inaction seriously disorganize the one and destroy 
the other. 

The debating society at Philadelphia was con- 
stantly urging an attack on Boston. Gage had twelve 
veteran regiments, supported by a well-armed fleet 
in the harbor, and an attack on the city would have 
resulted probably in the loss of the attacking force, and 
certainly in the destruction of the town. But " On to 
Boston ! " was the cry in Philadelphia, just as " On to 
Richmond ! " was the cry in Washington in the other re- 
bellion. The Virginian commander in chief of 1775 was 
made of stronger material than the Virginian of 1861, 
and no urgency or appeals could make him move until 
his judgment decided that the time was propitious. 
He could not neutralize the British fleet without heavy 
artillery. The only heavy guns within the control 
of the Continentals were at Ticonderoga, from which 
there were neither roads nor transportation. When 
the snows came and the ground froze hard, ox-teams 



112 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

could drag them on sledges over the fields to the 
camp, and then something could be done. 

Washington also had knowledge the Congress 
could not have. He knew Gage. He had served 
with him in the Braddock campaign, where he com- 
manded the Forty-fourth Regiment as lieutenant 
colonel, Colonel Sir Peter Halkett being in command 
of the brigade. He had seen Gage at mess, at drill, 
on the march, in camp, and in battle, and had meas- 
ured every faculty and quality. He understood how 
much intelligence, fortitude, pertinacity, and patience 
he had, and how much he had not. He knew Gage's 
hand, and he played his own accordingly, just as 
Lee afterward played his against McClellan, Pope, 
and Grant. But while the weather was open, sledges 
were prepared in the woods of Vermont, and ani- 
mals collected at convenient depots. Of this no one 
knew but the commander in chief. To communicate 
it to the Congress would have been to inform Gage, 
and bring on an attack before he was prepared. 
Congress was very leaky, and several members were 
inclined to make things easy by hedging, and by 
keeping open the door of reconciliation. 

In August he was called upon to define the rela- 
tions the two armies should occupy to each other, 
and to settle the question once for all whether the 
conflict should be war, regulated by the rules of civi- 
lized warfare, or whether the one side should treat it 
as an insurrection, to be suppressed by any means 
the loyal side deemed necessary. The solid sense of 
the English had long before settled all questions 
growing out of the right of armed resistance to ille- 
gal laws and wrongful usurpations of authority, for 
an act of Richard H had declared that adherence to 



THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS. 113 

the King de facto should not be considered to be 
treason. 

But Gage, with that fine contempt for the rights 
of others which has always distinguished a domi- 
nating race, decided that all Englishmen taken in 
arms against their lawful King were rebels, and were 
to be treated as criminals, imprisoned in jails, tried 
by loyal juries, sentenced by loyal judges, and hung 
by loyal sheriffs. Acting on this plain proposition 
and simple axiom, he had confined in the common 
jail of Boston some officers of the Continental army 
who had fallen into his hands, and treated them with 
great indignity. The commander in chief at once 
called General Gage's attention to this conduct as 
contrary to the rules which controlled officers and 
gentlemen, in war. 

The ex-lieutenant colonel of the Forty-fourth 
took occasion to read his ex-provincial militia com- 
rade a lecture on the iniquity of rebellion and the 
impiety of treason, and to suggest that the halter 
was the only logical, just, and necessary way of 
dealing with such conduct. Washington first put 
his British prisoners in jail, and then gave Gage a 
little lesson in manners by showing him that gentle- 
men do not scold nor vituperate, but that they act. 
The act of retaliation settled the question. The 
status of war was conceded and acknowledged, and 
there was never thereafter any question of rebel or 
traitor, treason or rebellion, between the British and 
the Continental authorities. 

The Continental line extended around the west, 
south, and northwest sides, of Boston, about sixteen 
miles in length, and was defended by a series of forts, 
redoubts, and earthworks, held by sixteen thousand 



114 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

men — a man to every six feet. It was vulnerable at 
several points. It was pierced about the center by 
the Charles River, a navigable stream, practicable 
for General Gage's fleet. 

He had been re-enforced up to twenty veteran 
regiments, and could at any time, from July until 
November, have moved a force up the river, pierced 
the center, and rolled back the left wing, under 
Major-General Charles Lee, or the right wing, under 
Major-General Artemus Ward, on itself, and de- 
stroyed Washington's army. But the lieutenant 
colonel of the Forty-fourth had had a lesson on the 
Monongahela, and another one at Breed's Hill, of 
the fighting qualities of the militia, and was disin- 
clined to risk an enterprise against them. He was 
roundly denounced in England for his inaction and 
cowardice, as they stigmatized it, and in October was 
relieved by General Sir William Howe, the brother 
of Lord Howe commanding the fleet. The Howes 
were grandsons of George II by Miss Kilmansegg, 
commemorated by Hood, and nephews of the king, 
and connection, not merit, gave them these important 
commands, the most responsible at that time in the 
British army and navy. 

The Congress chafed greatly under the delay, 
but made no impression on Washington. In Sep- 
tember he proposed an attack on Boston by means 
of boats, in co-operation with an attempt on the Brit- 
ish lines at Roxbury, but the council of war unani- 
mously agreed " that it was not expedient to miake 
the attempt at present at least." Washington wrote 
to Congress communicating this decision, and said, " I 
can not say that I have wholly laid it [the attack] 
aside ; but new events may occasion new measures." 



THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS. 115 

The pugnacious disposition of the man was not 
satisfied with the inaction of a council of war, and as 
soon as the Charles River froze over he proposed to 
cross on the ice and attack. The council of war 
again thwarted him. But he was determined to get 
at the enemy by water if he could not reach them by 
land. He fitted out and commissioned six armed 
vessels to operate in their rear on their transports 
and storeships. The militia of Marblehead and the 
fishermen on the coast of New England supplied the 
bravest, most daring sailors that ever flew a flag 
since the British buccaneer of the Spanish main, and 
for a time the commander in chief of the army was 
also lord high admiral of the sea force, just as his 
British ancestors had been a thousand years before, 
to defend their homes and altars from the Saxon and 
the Dane. He was chief judge in admiralty as well, 
and decided all questions of prizes and contraband 
of war, and distribution of prize money. His ships 
were called pirates, but they were not treated as such. 

During the winter the accumulation of ammuni- 
tion and collection of siege guns continued, until 
early in March, 1776, he was ready to strike. Dor- 
chester Heights is an elevated piece of ground to 
the south of Boston, and commands the harbor and 
south side of the city. The possession of it is abso- 
lutely essential to the security of the port and it 
passes comprehension why Gage did not occupy and 
fortify it during the six months he was penned up in 
Boston. Washington had seen its dominating im- 
portance on his first ride along his lines. Its pos- 
session was of no use to him without heavy artillery. 
Held with long-range guns, it made Boston and Bos- 
ton harbor untenable. It neutralized both army 
9 



Il6 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

and navy at one move, and for months the resources 
of the quartermaster and commissary's department 
were taxed to their utmost to supply means for this 
checkmate. 

By March the guns of Ticonderoga had arrived, 
hauled over the snow and ice and frozen ground by 
oxen, and some ammunition had been collected and 
prepared. There was not enough to carry on a pro- 
longed cannonade, but Washington knew his man, and 
judged rightly that the moral effect of the exhibi- 
tion of force would be sufficient. Consequently, on 
the night of the 4th of March all his guns from Rox- 
bury to East Cambridge, everything north of Charles 
River, opened on the redoubts and forts opposite 
them, and kept up a noisy demonstration all through 
the night. 

The British commander concentrated his troops 
behind the expected point of attack at the place of 
firing, and Washington placed two thousand men with 
proper intrenching tools on Dorchester Heights, 
where before day they had covered themselves with 
sufficient intrenchments and the heavy guns of Ti- 
conderoga. As daylight disclosed the disaster, the 
commander of the fleet in the harbor sent w^ord to 
the commander of the troops on land, that if the 
Americans stayed where they were he could not stay 
where he was. 

General Howe prepared at once to storm the 
threatening intrenchment, and ordered out Lord 
Percy with three thousand men to take the works. 
A storm came up, the assault was abandoned, and 
Howe decided to evacuate his untenable position. 
He informed some of the principal inhabitants of his 
determination ; they conveyed the information to 



THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS. 117 

the camp at Cambridge, and Washington, acting on 
the maxim of a bridge of gold for a flying enemy, 
forbore to molest or hinder the movement. 

On March 17, 1776, the British general em- 
barked his troops on the fleet of transports in the 
harbor, and, carrying with him nine hundred of the 
principal inhabitants, sailed to Halifax. Sir Henry 
Clinton in the preceding January had carried off a 
part of the force to subjugate North Carolina. In 
the abandoned town Washington secured two hun- 
dred cannon of various calibers, and an immense 
quantity of small arms, ammunition, and military 
stores of every kmd. The British army was liberal 
in the supplies furnished to equip its adversary, and 
the ammunition captured in Boston was larger in 
amount than all that had been collected and used by 
the Americans in the process of their expulsion. 



CHAPTER VII. 

WAR, AND THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 

For twelve months the colonies had resisted the 
Government troops, nullified the Government laws, 
defied the Government, Governors, and courts. 
They had met the King's troops at Lexington and 
Concord, hunted them back to Boston, and then 
bottled them up in that town until by force they had 
expelled them from the colony. In Virginia, the 
royal Governor Dunmore had been defeated at 
Great Bridge in a battle on December 9th, 1775. 
In North Carolina, Richard Caswell had met the 
Highland Tories under Donald McDonald at Moore's 
Creek, February 27, 1776, and routed them with a 
loss of nine hundred prisoners, two thousand stand 
of arms, and ^15,000 in gold. Connecticut and 
Massachusetts had captured and held Crown Point 
and Ticonderoga, the gateway to Canada. On May 
10, 1775, Montgomery had captured Montreal, and 
the conquest of Canada was averted only by the 
accident of the death of Montgomery and the wound- 
ing of Arnold. 

The rebel flag was flying on the Atlantic from 
Bermuda to Newfoundland, and British commerce 
was dominated in the North Atlantic by piratical 
cruisers. In the summer of 1775 Gage had been 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, ng 

made by Washington to recognize belligerent rights 
in treatment of prisoners of war, but the British 
Government still insisted upon regarding the move- 
ment as rebellion. Now, in rebellion — resistance to 
the laws — every individual is held responsible for his 
own action, in his own person and his own property. 
The status of war changes all that, and transfers 
responsibility from the individual to his government, 
or supreme authority, which is waging the war, and 
responsibility ceases to be personal and becomes 
national. 

Considering the rebellion as necessary to be re- 
pressed, the Government first read the Riot Act to 
the rebels in the way of the Boston Port Bill, then 
sent in the troops to disperse disorderly assemblies 
and suppress turbulence. The disorderly assemblies 
at Bunker Hill, at Moore's Creek, at Great Bridge, 
all refused to disperse, and, after a manner, mainly 
dispersed the posse comitatus sent against them. 
Therefore, without recognition and acknowledgment, 
the fact of war made itself known and appreciated, 
and it got to be understood in London that a fact 
can not be waived or suppressed by a preamble of 
Parliament or an Order in Council, or by a deci- 
sion in the Court of King's Bench. War must be 
met by war, and war is not only fighting and killing 
and burning but requires thinking and brains, reason 
and intelligence, a directed plan, a method, to accom- 
plish results. Over such a territory as that occupied 
by the colonies, the possession of certain positions 
were necessary in order to dominate it, and the con- 
trol of certain lines of communication imperative. 

Geography remains unchanged from century to 
century, and the same geographical conditions will 



120 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

require substantially the same movements. The ad- 
vance of the Russians on the Bosporus is by the 
same lines that Alaric and Attila marched to the 
west. Napoleon's inroad into Italy was on the 
track of Hannibal. The same things to be done, 
the identical obstacles to meet with, the means em- 
ployed will always be the same in substance, whether 
in the first, the twentieth, or the thirtieth century. 
The invasion of Europe by the hordes of Asia will be 
round the eastern shore of the Black Sea ; and the 
mountain ranges of middle Europe will be used and 
held as defenses against them, just as they were 
against the Huns and the Goths. 

The physical conformation of the United States, 
as long as Canada is occupied by an alien power, 
renders the line of Lake Champlain and the Hudson 
its weakest point. A force moving down the lake 
could easily unite with a force coming up the Hud- 
son, and thus isolate New England. In the summer 
of 1759, the British, under General Amherst, had 
secured Forts Ticonderoga and Crown Point, and 
thus closed the postern by which the French could 
move between the middle, southern, and eastern 
colonies. The possession of Canada gave assur- 
ance of the control of this outwork. But the cap- 
ture of Ticonderoga and Crown Point by Allen and 
Arnold had nearly neutralized the position of the 
northern province, and destroyed the great advan- 
tage the St. Lawrence secured. 

With the control of deep water, British arms 
would threaten the northern settlements, and the 
troops of Vermont and New Hampshire be called 
back to defend their homes and their farms. Howe 
and Gage had both served in this campaign on 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 12 1 

Champlain, and had an idea of the importance 
of the line. Whether they suggested it or not, 
the ministry at length arrived at the determination 
to treat the insurrection as war, and to operate 
against it on defined lines of strategy. They pro- 
posed to move Howe from Boston to New York, 
take possession of the sea and the city, and move up 
the Hudson to Albany, to meet a force coming down 
Champlain under command of General Sir Guy 
Carleton, Governor of Canada, which was to retake 
the lake forts, and complete the British line from the 
Atlantic to the St. Lawrence, and separate New Eng- 
land from Virginia. 

Sir Henry Clinton had taken off two thousand 
men from Howe at Boston to reduce the Carolinas, 
but the Highland rout at Moore's Creek gave him 
check on the Cape Fear, and his prompt repulse by 
Moultrie in Charleston harbor made him pause in 
his campaign of subjugation. Howe had moved to 
Halifax, but the military instinct of Washington 
convinced him that Clinton could not stay South, nor 
Howe North. They could not remain idle after 
their repulse at Boston, at Great Bridge, at Moore's 
Creek, at Sullivan's Island ; to do so would be not 
only confession of defeat, but defeat itself. In the 
game that Washington had been playing for ten 
months in the trenches at Boston, he had foreseen 
the next move, and had provided against it as far as 
his means would allow. New York and the line of 
the St. Lawrence— the lake and the river— must be the 
next move of the enemy. At least it ought to be, for 
it was the proper move to make. 

Therefore, when Washington occupied Boston on 
March 17th, he put his entire energies to work in 



122 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

Stamping out smallpox there, and collecting the 
arms and munitions of war left by the enemy, and on 
the 2oth started his advance on the march for New 
York. He himself set out on April 4th, and on April 
14th reported to Congress the arrival of himself 
and army at New York on the day before. 

His army present for duty was 8,101 ; aggregate 
present and absent 10,235 ; which shows a high 
standard of discipline and efficiency in an army of 
green troops after a year's service in camp without 
marching and fighting, and after a long march of 
twenty-four days. Under such circumstances, a loss 
of only twenty per cent of the aggregate present and 
absent and the number for duty proves fidelity and 
devotion in the troops, and firmness and capacity in 
the commander. A march of twenty-four days by 
troops not inured to the discipline, the fatigue, and 
the customs of the march, fresh from ten months* 
camp duty, was a severe test for men and officers, 
and the way they stood it was in the highest degree 
satisfactory. This was the end of the war in New 
England. With the exception of Stark's fight at 
Bennington, August 16, 1777, and Sullivan's abortive 
attempt on Newport, August 29, 1778, the scene of 
war moved south and west of the Hudson. 

It was a fixed delusion of the British mind that 
the insurrection in America was instigated, organized, 
and supported by a small minority of malcontents 
composed of ignorant agitators and needy adventur- 
ers. The gentry, the property holders, the educated 
class, were all believed to be " loyal," and rebellion 
to be promoted in the main by the " low Irish " and 
the radical descendants of the Puritans of the Com- 
monwealth. This conviction constrained action and 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 123 

directed sentiment in the great mass of the English 
people. Disunion was to them the direst disaster, 
for it would bring the loss of the American trade, 
and with it the downfall of British dominion of 
the seas. But added to this material consideration 
was the honorable sentiment that it would be base 
to desert kith and kin engaged in a death-struggle 
with faction in defense of the rights of the mother 
country, when desertion meant defeat, and defeat 
destruction of life, liberty, and property. 

Although in England there was a large and in- 
fluential sentiment against the coercion of America 
by arms, there was absolutely none in favor of dis- 
solving the union and permitting the colonies to 
establish an independent and separate government. 
Every party was agreed upon the necessity of bring- 
ing them back — George II and Lord North by force 
of arms and by conquest, the Earl of Chatham and 
the Duke of Richmond by conciliation and guarantee 
of local self-government. But this extraordinary 
delusion on the part of the mother country, like the 
identical one believed in by the Northern States 
toward the Southern States in the war of secession, 
i86i-'65, was absolutely unfounded in each case. 
The resistance to British laws did not mean, in the 
first place, revolution. The right of rebellion had 
been always the right to resist illegal acts of gov- 
ernment by arms, and was the method by which the 
balance of liberty had been preserved and the Eng- 
lish Constitution developed. It was the check on 
absolute power. 

The men of New England and of Virginia were 
close to the Revolution of 1688. They were only 
four generations from that of 1649, and they under- 



124 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

stood that the right of petition was backed by the 
right of resistance. " Resistance to tyrants is obe- 
dience to God," had always been the foundation 
creed of the race ; and when the King's officers at- 
tempted to do illegal things in Boston, or in Norfolk, 
or in Alamance, or on the Cape Fear, or on Sulli- 
van's Island, the English took arms and resisted. 
The affairs at Lexington and at Breed's Hill, the 
attacks at Great Bridge, at Moore's Creek, and at 
Fort Moultrie, had developed the rebellion into war, 
and the English colonies were almost unanimous in 
support of it. They were led by no minority. It 
was an uprising of the whole people. New Eng- 
land rushed to arms as one man at the sound of the 
guns at Lexington. The countrymen of Virginia, 
from the Blue Mountains to Old Point Comfort, 
marched on Lord Dunmore when he attempted to 
incite their servants and negroes against them and 
add the horrors of servile to the barbarities of sav- 
age warfare. 

The conditions in North Carolina were peculiar. 
After the rebellion of 1745 large numbers of the fol- 
lowers of Prince Charlie had been deported to the 
Cape Fear, and had been voluntarily followed by 
their friends and relatives. They were entirely Jac- 
obite and bitterly anti-Hanoverian. But they had 
been spared death and confiscation on condition of 
taking the oath of allegiance to the House of Han- 
over, and had given their paroles never to take up 
arms against the Hanoverian King. When, there- 
fore, the question of resistance came up, the inflex- 
ible Presbyterian conscience controlled them, and 
they were bound by their oaths and their paroles. 

This was true of the Highlanders. The Scotch- 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 125 

Irish of the western part of the colony about Meck- 
lenburg took up the question of conscience and 
solemnly debated it, and decided that, inasmuch as 
the King of England had broken his oath to do jus- 
tice and obey the laws, their oath of allegiance bound 
them no longer. They arrived at the same conclusion 
that the Virginians under Patrick Henry and the 
Massachusetts men under James Otis and Samuel 
Adams did, that protection and allegiance are re- 
ciprocal, and that the failure of the King to do his 
duty absolved them from all obligation to him. 

It became manifest to all that the condition of 
resistance to law must of necessity be temporary; 
that either the Government must abandon its pre- 
tension of the right to make laws for the colonies, 
and that they must govern themselves, or that they 
must be reduced to the condition of conquered prov- 
inces. They must be governed by England, or they 
must govern themselves. The logical result of the 
situation was, that victory was absolutely necessary 
to success. It was clear that victory could not be 
achieved by the colonies alone. The sea was en- 
tirely controlled by the British. Every port, bay, 
sound, and river could be closed by their fleets, and 
while they could be prevented from penetrating the 
country, as long as they held the sole means of 
communicating with the world at large no recogni- 
tion of the right of self-government could ever be 
wrested from them. 

Samuel Adams says that from the beginning he 
saw clearly that the only safe and permanent secur- 
ity from the aggressions of the mother country was 
disunion and a separate government. It is certain 
that Virginia did not enter into the war with any such 



126 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

view or intention. She intended to resist usurpation 
until usurpation ceased, and she desired to go no fur- 
ther. The first and second Continental Congress had 
no other view. They sent petitions to the King and 
addresses to the people of Great Britain, of Canada, 
and of Bermuda, insisting that their cause — the pres- 
ervation of liberty and the right to be taxed only 
by their own representatives — was the cause of every 
British freeman at home and in every colony. 

As events unfolded, and the great exhibition of 
military force in the occupation of Boston and the 
concentration of troops and ships against the col- 
onists got them to understand that war was being 
waged against them, they fully appreciated the 
necessity and the duty of meeting war with war ; 
and war could only be carried on by a state — a gov- 
ernment ; therefore it became necessary that the 
colonies should become States, should undertake the 
responsibility of war, and should protect their citi- 
zens from the penalties of rebellion. 

The movement of public opinion in the colonies 
had tended to this conclusion, since the passage of 
the Boston Port Bill and the affair at Lexington. The 
garrison of Boston with an army had arrayed all 
New England in armed resistance. The proclama- 
tion of Lord Dunmore, offering liberty to servants 
and slaves in Virginia, was followed by the victory 
at the Great Bridge. The rising of the loyal High- 
landers on the Cape Fear was dispersed at Moore's 
Creek, and the attack on South Carolina had been 
defeated at Fort Moultrie. New England, Virginia, 
and the Carolinas were at w^ar with the mother coun- 
try. Between the two sections the Middle Colonies 
lay neutral. 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 



27 



Maryland was contented with her government 
and her charter. She felt secure in her right of local 
self-government, and had asserted it in her General 
Assembly from the foundation of the colony. The 
right of free thought secured by Caecilius Calvert, 
and never impaired while the proprietaries and the 
native Marylander controlled the Government, had 
evolved a type of character distinct and sharply de- 
fined. The delightful climate of the bay, and its 
great rivers, the picturesque scenery of meadow and 
forest, of plain and of mountain, made life one con- 
tinual delight, cultivated an aesthetic enjoyment of 
beauty and pleasure, and produced a race liberal in 
thought, tender in sentiment, brave, chivalric, and 
generous. It was frank, manly, courageous, and de- 
termined. When its rights were infringed by the 
Stamp Act, the county court of Frederick County 
decided that the law was void, because contrary to 
common right, and required its officers to disobey and 
ignore it, by its recorded action. When tea was at- 
tempted to be imported on the 19th of October, 1775, 
at Annapolis, the Marylanders burnt ship and cargo 
in open day, and no attempt was ever made to extort 
from them apology or compensation. No British 
garrison ever affronted their borders, no British sol- 
dier ever trod their soil ; but when Boston was at- 
tacked and New England invaded, the chivalry of 
the race rose at once, declared that the cause of 
Boston was the cause of all, and, feeling that "blood 
is thicker than water," rallied from mountain to sea, 
and marched to the relief of their kin beyond the 
Hudson. And from the hour Cresap marched from 
Frederick to the day of the surrender at Yorktown, 
the Maryland line on every stricken field — at Long 



128 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

Island, at White Plains, at Brandywine, Germantown, 
Trenton, and Monmouth, and the long roll of South- 
ern battles — bore the standard of the black and gold 
in the front of fire, sometimes to victory, oftentimes 
to defeat — always to glory. 

But Maryland loved the mother. The ties of 
blood were as close to her as to brethren in New 
England. They were faithful to their friends, and 
they stood fast by them in the test of trial. No Tory 
regiment was ever raised and served in Maryland. 
One was organized on the eastern shore, but it was 
promptly moved to New Jersey, and soon afterward 
to Nova Scotia and dispersed. The pressure of the 
war drove all men's minds in the same direction. 
The Scotch-Irish of Mecklenburg County, North 
Carolina, first reached the logical conclusion that 
final separation and disunion could afford the only 
guarantee of future peace, and security for local self- 
government. 

A meeting at Charlotte, on the 20th day of May, 
1775, solemnly resolved "That we, the citizens of 
Mecklenburg County, do hereby dissolve the polit- 
ical bands which have connected us to the mother 
country, and do hereby absolve ourselves from all 
allegiance to the British Crown, and abjure all polit- 
ical connection, contract, or association with that 
nation, which has wantonly trampled on our rights 
and liberties, and inhumanly shed the blood of 
American patriots at Lexington. That we do here- 
by declare ourselves a free and independent people; 
are, and of right ought to be, a sovereign and self- 
governing association, under the control of no power 
other than that of our God and the General Govern- 
ment of the Congress, to the maintenance of which 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 129 

independence we solemnly pledge to each other our 
mutual co-operation, our lives, our fortunes, and our 
most sacred honor." And they adopted a rule of 
law, and organized a government to enforce the 
law and carry out their determmation. The simi- 
larity of some expressions of this declaration with 
those of the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, 
has led to vehement denial of its genuineness, and 
the overwhelming proof of there having been a 
meeting at Charlotte in May, 1775, which made some 
hostile declaration, has been sought to be met by 
substituting the action of a meeting which, it is con- 
ceded, did take place there on May 31st, but which 
did not declare independence. 

But the evidence that Mecklenburg County did 
declare independence in May, 1775, is absolutely 
conclusive. The contemporaneous records of the 
county court show more than twenty deeds recorded 
between 1785 and 1793, which date the independence 
of North Carolina from May, 1775, and of the United 
States from July, 1776. Patents for land, issued by 
the Governor of North Carolina about the same time, 
date the independence of the State from May, 1775. 
Therefore, though much denied, it must be agreed 
that Mecklenburg County did declare independ- 
ence on the 20th of May, 1775. A copy of theii 
resolutions was sent to the Provincial Congress at 
Halifax, which promptly passed resolutions direct- 
ing their deputies in the Continental Congress to 
vote for independence and to form foreign alliances. 
Events had lagged for a year. At Lexington, on 
April 19, 1775, and Breed's Hill, June 17, 1775, at 
Ticonderoga and Crown Point, May 10, 1775 — New 
England had made the issue of war. The summer 



1^0 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

was occupied in carrying on correspondence, discus- 
sion, and conference. 

The Continental army, under its Virginian com- 
mander, held Gage fast in Boston. In November, 
Dunmore offered freedom to the servants of Virginia. 
The Virginians rose, drove him from his fortification 
of Great Bridge, December 9, 1775, and on New 
Year's day, 1776, he burnt Norfolk. On February 27* 
1776, the Whigs routed the Highlanders at Moore's 
Creek. On June 28, 1776, Rutledge and Moultrie 
defeated Sir Henry Clinton on Sullivan's Island, in 
Charleston harbor. These fast following events 
were heating the hearts of the people. 

In May, 1776, Virginia instructed her deputies in 
Congress ^' to propose to that respectable body to 
declare the United Colonies free and independent 
States, and to give the assent of the colony to meas- 
ures to form foreign alliances, and a confederation, 
provided the power of forming governments for the 
internal regulations of each colony be left to the colo- 
nial legislatures." Maryland, on June 28th, instruct- 
ed her deputies to assent to a declaration of inde- 
pendence, and to foreign alliances, and on July 3d 
issued her solemn declaration that Maryland was, 
and of right ought to be, a free, sovereign, and inde- 
pendent State. On May 4, Rhode Island omitted the 
King's name from all writs and proclamations, and 
the May town meetings throughout Massachusetts 
declared for independence. In June, Connecticut, 
New Hampshire, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and 
Delaware, all declared for independence. 

On June 7th, Richard Henry Lee, a deputy from 
Virginia, submitted to the Congress a resolution 
" That these United Colonies are, and of right ought 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 131 

to be, free and independent States ; that they are 
absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown ; 
and that all political connection between them and 
the state of Great Britain is and ought to be totally 
dissolved. That it is expedient forthwith to take the 
most effectual measures for forming foreign alliances. 
That a plan of confederation be prepared, and trans- 
mitted to the respective colonies for their consider- 
ation and approbation." This resolution was 
promptly seconded by John Adams, of Massachusetts, 
and opposed by Dickenson and Wilson, of Pennsyl- 
vania, and Robert Livingston, of New York. The 
issues presented were, first. Independence ; second, 
Foreign Alliances. Attachment to home, home peo- 
ple, and home ties arrayed a large section of public 
sentiment against the first. Inherited race antago- 
nisms of a thousand years forbade sympathy with 
the second. There never had been a time since the 
Crusades when Englishmen were in alliance with 
Frenchmen and Spaniards. They were the natural- 
born enemies of the English race, and it was just 
as natural for Englishmen to attack them on sight 
as to kill a snake. 

The grandfathers of many of the colonists had 
won fame and fortune by the plunder of treasure 
galleons on the Spanish main, and the present gener- 
ation had fought them and their savage allies from 
the Lakes to the Gulf, on the Ohio, along the French 
Broad, the Chattahoochee, and the St. Mary's. The 
very idea of foreign alliance was distasteful and 
hateful to very many earnest Englishmen who sin- 
cerely desired to preserve their rights, but they 
doubted whether such alliance would not lead to sub- 
ordination to their hereditary foes. The Congress 
10 



132 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



was divided. Independence with alliance, subjugation 
without alliance, undoubtedly led to future danger ; 
but subjugation was present and pressing. In the 
debate the aggressive, radical thought — as it always 
has and always will — prevailed over the conservatism 
which is in the main timidity. Action, which is 
courage, must overcome non-action, which is always 
cowardice. 

And therefore the timid counsels of New York 
and Pennsylvania were overridden by the positive 
enthusiasm of Virginia, backed by Massachusetts, 
and on July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independ- 
ence was adopted. The whole weight and influence 
of Washington were thrown on the side of action. 
With patient, persistent correspondence, he urged on 
the governors of the States the necessity of foreign 
alliance to prevent subjugation, and the necessity of 
a declaration of independence to secure alliance. It 
is not just to say that his influence contributed 
largely to secure the declaration. It did not — nor 
did any one man's, nor any one State's. Independ- 
ence was the necessary consequence of armed resist- 
ance to the laws ; and when the issue was made 
between the supremacy of the law or the supremacy 
of force, one or the other must prevail. If Great 
Britain was resolved to hold to the right to make 
laws for the colonies, she alone would have the 
power to decide what laws she would make. If, on 
the other hand, it be held that the colonies had the 
right to make their own laws, that fact made them 
independent. 

The supreme intelligence of a race, of a great 
mass of people, takes in and appreciates such an 
issue, as clearly, as strongly, and as vividly as the 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 



13: 



highest intellect or the most vigorous mind, and the 
people think with their hearts. They arrive at con- 
clusions independent of and superior to ratiocination 
and to logic. They knew that they must be free — free 
to govern themselves according to their own ideas of 
justice — or that they must be governed and controlled 
by the ideas of Great Britain. All along the sea- 
board, in the township meetings of New England, 
in the vestries of Maryland and Virginia, in the 
county meetings of the Carolinas, the body of the 
people were meditating, ruminating, discussing, de- 
bating these problems. What Henry, and Lee, and 
Adams, and the leaders did, was to point the way. 
The people had resolved on independence before 
the Congress acted or the provincial assemblies had 
taken ground. 

Independence was a popular movement, originat- 
ing among and propagated by the great mass of the 
people, and it is error to think that any one man, or 
set of men, contributed largely to it. It would have 
come if the leaders had never lived; it would have 
created leaders. If Washington had not lived at that 
particular epoch, the rebellion of i775-'76 would 
probably have failed, but it would have arisen again 
and been successful in the next generation. For 
when men mature from boyhood, they must emanci- 
pate themselves. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE NEW YORK CAMPAIGN. 

When Washington arrived at New York his situ- 
ation was still most unsatisfactory. He was to hold 
a position on deep water, without ships, without 
heavy artillery, without scientific or skilled engi- 
neers. Though his own genius and experience 
showed him the points to occupy and fortify in 
order to control the waters around New York, he 
was utterly unable to accomplish what was abso- 
lutely necessary for success. 

The British vessels could anchor within easy 
gunshot of New York, and with the means at his 
command the occupation of Long Island afforded 
the only chance for delaying them. Delay was the 
only thing possible for the Americans. The war 
was greatly opposed at home. The Continental na- 
tions were slowly awakening to the fact that a tre- 
mendous blow impended over Great Britain, and 
that a wound was threatened which would seriously 
impair her prestige, inflict great loss of material re- 
sources, and, by the creation of a great maritime 
nation such as the Americans of the seaboard — with 
their bays, their rivers, and their fisheries, must of 
necessity become in course of time — would neutral- 
ize her supremacy on the high seas. The French 
had seen this from the first, and industriously fanned 



THE NEW YORK CAMPAIGN. 135 

the flame of discontent by emissaries in the colonies, 
by sympathy in Paris, and by secret and adroit sub- 
ventions of money. It was the counter move of the 
French Minister in retaliation for the loss of Canada. 

Washington understood, as few Americans of his 
day did understand, that the way to win respect is 
to compel it, and that his first duty was to show the 
world that the Americans could fight, that he could 
lead them, and that their resistance would be long 
and obstinate. The control of the deep sea gave 
Great Britain absolute control of the coast from 
Halifax to Florida, and largely that of commerce on 
the high sea. It made the occupation by the Ameri- 
cans of any position within reach of the guns of the 
fleet precarious. The strategy of the war, there- 
fore, must of necessity be defensive. Allies and re- 
enforcements were sure to come from the ambition, 
the necessities, and the antipathies of Continental 
Europe. They would certainly embrace this oppor- 
tunity to humble the mistress of the seas, if it was 
an opportunity. But to secure allies, the colonists 
must prove that they could furnish a solid basis for 
alliance; to draw re-enforcements, they must show 
armies to re-enforce. 

Therefore Washington's business was to fight 
enough, but not too much ; to retreat when he could 
not help it, but not too far or too often; to keep 
his troops encouraged by enough taste of blood to 
brace them up ; and to satisfy Europe that there 
was a prospect of success. To do this required 
an army, ordnance, arms, ammunition, men, rations, 
wagons, horses, and forage. Some of these requi- 
sites were furnished by the colonies to their own 
troops. The Maryland Convention, for instance, 



36 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



appointed a committee to inquire, report, and con- 
tract for as many rifles, muskets, and bayonets, with 
belts and cartridge-boxes, as could be furnished by 
the mechanics of the colony. They reported the 
name of every gunsmith, and the number of guns, 
bayonets, cartridge-boxes, and belts that each could 
furnish per month, and contracted with every man 
who could wield a hammer or a file, from Penn's line 
to the Potomac and from the Susquehanna to the 
Pocomoke, for all the guns and accoutrements they 
could supply. This system was pursued through 
the whole war. The Maryland line thus was kept 
armed whenever it was possible to manufacture 
arms. But the energy of the rebellion was in the 
army and in the colonial congresses or conventions. 

The Congress at Philadelphia did not attract the 
best men. It had no power; it could do nothing. 
The places where work was done were Annapolis, 
or Williamsburg, or Halifax, or Charleston, or at 
Salem. It could and did issue at times promises to 
pay, which were promptly repudiated by the general 
sense of the community, but in the whole course of 
the war the Continental Congress never raised a 
man for the army nor a dollar by taxation of the 
people. It was a league of independent colonies 
differing widely from each other in race, affinities, 
and traditions, in political institutions, and in re- 
ligious faith. The Puritan of New England was per- 
meated with an intense conviction of the solemnity 
of life — a " little space of time between two eterni- 
ties " — and was impressed with a profound sense of 
the duty of preparing himself, his family, his friends, 
and everybody he could make do as he thought prop- 
er, for this eternity of torture and suffering. 



THE NEW YORK CAMPAIGN. 



n 



This theological creed or subjective training has 
made the Puritan type a distinct one in the evolu- 
tion of races. His super-abnormal conscience, add- 
ed to severe rigors of climate, have produced a char- 
acter which, for self-reliance, endurance, courage, 
and perseverance, is unequaled in history, though it 
may lack the graces and decorations which alleviate 
the troubles of life. The Cavalier population, on 
the other hand, on the Chesapeake, on Pamlico and 
Albemarle sounds, and on the Cape Fear, the Ashley, 
and the Cooper rivers, regarded life not as a gloomy 
preparation for a future state — the terrors of which 
could only be escaped by skillful avoidance of the 
decrees of Providence, or by constant and stern ad- 
herence to duty — but as a bright and beautiful gar- 
den, full of lovely flowers, delightful odors, fragrant 
herbs; where the rose, when plucked too roughly, 
avenged the indignity with its thorns; and the bee, 
when robbed of his honey, punished the marauder 
with his sting; where the pleasure of living justified 
" life " ; where every sensation was a delight and 
every sentiment a gratification. 

Love, charity, gratitude, friendship, were the 
cardinal virtues. Revenge, malice, hatred — ignoble 
vices. They lived to live; they loved to love; they 
enjoyed being friends. Between these two civiliza- 
tions there could never be sympathy entire and cor- 
dial. It was the feeling of family, blood, race, that 
first drew the Cavalier to the side of the Puritan to 
defend him and his rights from aggression ; and 
once there, it was contrary to every theory of his 
life ever to leave it. Loving ease and pleasure, self- 
indulgent to a degree, they sacrifice everything they 
have for kin or friends, and stake everything on the 



138 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



side they espouse. These two diametrically dis- 
cordant societies could not possibly be welded into 
a perfect union. They were jealous of each other, 
and each was too suspicious to trust any neighbor 
with any influence over its destinies. 

North Carolina and South Carohna, Virginia, 
Maryland, and Pennsylvania, New York and New 
Hampshire, had bitter boundary disputes, and all 
were watchful, lest alliances might sacrifice some 
of their charter rights instead of strengthening 
them. Therefore the Continental Congress lacked 
coherence, force, power, and enthusiasm. It had 
the jealousy of small men against military dictator- 
ship, such as was subsequently felt against McClellan, 
Grant, and Sherman by the Congress of the United 
States. It passed resolutions calling upon the colo- 
nies to furnish men and means. It had no power to 
enforce its own requisitions. It left to the colonies 
the power to appoint regimental officers, and assumed 
to itself that of selecting general officers. It ap- 
pointed generals, but it could not enlist a man. It 
selected commissaries, but could not provide a barrel 
of beef. It sent out quartermaster generals, but had 
not a wagon or a horse of its own. 

Therefore the war and the strategy of the war was 
to be devised and executed by Washington, and this 
labor was far more arduous than the marches, the 
bivouacs, the battles of the ensuing five years. It 
is a fact that the Continental Congress was a hin- 
drance and not a help. Many members were ardent 
patriots ; they risked their lives and their fortunes 
for the cause. But not a few were time-servers, 
patriots for the present, to avoid risk to person and 
property, but prudent as well to keep up a secret tie 



THE NEW YORK CAMPAIGN, 



139 



with the mother country and its friends in this. 
With such a body behind him, utterly useless to help 
but quite efficient to hinder, Washington was forced 
to rely on himself. He was one of the greatest letter- 
writers that ever lived. The last collection of his 
letters contains six or seven thousand in fourteen 
good-sized volumes, and still it is very incomplete, 
having left out hundreds as yet unpublished. 

But from the day Washington left the Congress, 
on June 22, 1775, to December 23, 1783, when he re- 
signed his commission at Annapolis, not a day passed 
without his addressing a long letter to the Congress, 
to the Governor of one of the States, or to one of 
the leading men in the respective States, pointing out 
the means by which the common cause could be 
furthered, and urging persistently, with never-failing 
patience and courage, that these means and measures 
be utilized to the last degree. When, therefore, the 
army v/as collected at New York, everyone knew 
that the position was untenable. Sir William Howe 
had gone to Halifax with the great body of the 
garrison of Boston, and Sir Henry Clinton had sailed 
south with another part of it, to reduce the Carolinas. 
Georgia gave no trouble. 

The affair at Moore's Creek had warned Sir 
Henry out of the Cape Fear, and he proceeded to 
Charleston, where he lay until the fleet of Sir 
Peter Parker, from Ireland, re-enforced him. On 
June 28, 1776, the Palmetto Fort on Sullivan's 
Island, commanded by Moultrie, colonel of State 
troops under direction of John Rutledge, President 
of South Carolina, drove off the British fleet and 
British troops landed by Clinton, to carry it by 
assault. Therefore early in July Washington knew 



140 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

that the inevitable was about to take place. Sir Guy 
Carleton, Governor of Canada, would move down 
Lake Champlain, Sir William Howe and Sir Henry 
Clinton, re-enforced by Sir Peter Parker, would con- 
centrate in New York harbor, sail up the East River, 
cut off the Long Island garrison, and then proceed up 
the North River, communicate with General Carleton 
at Lake George, and cut the rebellion in half. 

It was the business of the American general to 
checkmate this game, and to do it without fighting, 
for a pitched battle would have been swift, certain 
ruin ; but to do it also without fleeing, for that would 
have been equally disastrous. He was to handle 
green troops so as to blood them sufficiently, and 
then get them out without destructive loss. There- 
fore when his army reached New York, on April 23, 
1776, he placed half of it' — nine thousand men — under 
command of Putnam, on Brooklyn Heights, on Long 
Island, v/hich dominated New York city and bay, 
just as Dorchester Heights had controlled Boston. 
But the position on Long Island was surrounded by 
deep water. Sir William Howe, the British com- 
mander in chief, had more than twenty-five thousand 
veteran troops, and an efficient fleet carrying as 
heavy guns as were then used in maritime war. The 
East River, between Long Island and New York, is a 
mile wide, and navigable for the heaviest ships. It 
is approached from the lower bay of New York 
through the Narrows, or from Long Island Sound 
through Hell Gate. 

On August 22, 1776, Sir William Howe, landed 
twenty thousand men at Gravesend Bay. On the 
26th he sent the fleet under command of his brother, 
Admiral Lord Howe, to make a feint on New York. 



THE NEW YORK CAMPAIGN. 



41 



On the 27th he moved on the American position, 
which he had flanked in the night. General Grant, 
with the Highland Regiments, advanced on the 
coast road, the outposts of which were held by 
the Maryland line under command of Major- 
General William Alexander, of New Jersey, who 
called himself Lord Stirling, after a Scotch earldom 
of James I's creation which had lapsed, and was 
claimed by the New Jersey Alexanders, and the 
claim disallowed by the Scotch courts. The Mary- 
landers were the first Americans who ever met the 
British in line of battle in the open field. Handled 
skillfully, and gallantly led by Alexander, Small- 
wood, and their regimental and line officers, the 
Marylanders, by reiterated charges, checked pursuit 
until nightfall. 

Washington saw the engagement from the 
Brooklyn side. The result was anticipated and 
provided for, and two nights afterward the whole 
American army was safely ferried over the East 
River and at once marched north, clear of the town. 
This movement was going on all night on the 
water, where sound travels easily and far. The 
British man-of-war Roebuck lay off Red Hook, just 
below Governor's Island, and why her lookout or 
watch did not hear this movement of nine thousand 
men, their artillery and their transportation, is one 
of the unexplained mysteries of the time. Howe 
pushed into the city of New York. Washington with- 
drew to the line of the Harlem River, the northern 
boundary of Manhattan Island, and the movements 
were so rapid on both sides, that Putnam, with a de- 
tachment of four thousand men, was isolated in the 
lower part of the town. 



142 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



Washington, in person, led two New England 
brigades down the streets to rescue Putnam, but on 
the appearance of fifteen or twenty red-coats, eight 
regiments ran like quarter horses ; whereupon the 
commander in chief, failing to make the colonels 
stop stampeding, belabored them with much energy 
and profuse emphasis, with a cane he was riding with. 
Neither cane nor malediction stayed the courant 
colonels; but a lady — Mrs. Murray — with a fine resi- 
dence on what is now known as Murray Hill, know- 
ing the weakness that commanding officers have for 
the good things of the table, prepared an elegant 
and substantial lunch, and invited Sir William and 
his staff to alight and enjoy it. No soldier who ever 
rode a horse ever refused an invitation to eat, and 
the British general stopped to refresh while his ene- 
my escaped. Putnam rejoined the army at Harlem, 
and Washington was extricated by the very difficult 
feat of withdrawing an inferior army from its envi- 
ronment by a superior army and fleet. Washington 
took position along the line of the Harlem River, 
across the upper end of the island, and the next day 
Howe attempted to storm the position. The attack 
was repulsed. 

The Hudson River was defended at the Palisades 
above New York, on the east side, by Fort Washing- 
ton, under command of Gen. Putnam, and on the 
west by Fort Lee, under Gen. Greene. Howe's next 
move clearly was to force the two forts with the 
fleet, while at the same time he landed an infantry 
force by way of the East River and pushed it in 
Washington's rear. He began on October 9, 1776, 
by driving two frigates over Putnam's and Greene's 
obstructions in the river and between their forts, and 



THE NEW YORK CAMPAIGN. 143 

on the 12th he landed the larger part of his army at 
Throg's Neck, to move in behind the American, and 
cut his line of supplies from Connecticut. 

Washington, fully anticipating the movement, had 
destroyed the bridge across the creek at the place of 
landing, and posted a sufficient force behind the marsh 
across which the British must move to attack him. 
Howe wasted six days trying to get at him, and 
Washington moved back up the river to White Plains, 
abandoning the whole of Manhattan Island except 
Fort Washington. Howe pushed on after him, and 
on October 28th carried an outpost at Chatterton 
Hill. The Maryland line, which under Lord Stirling 
had won its spurs at Brooklyn Heights, gathered 
fresh laurels here. Attacked by the Hessians under 
Rahl, it held on until surrounded, and then forced 
its way out with clubbed rifles under Griffith. It 
fought six to one, and lost one hundred and forty, 
to two hundred and twenty-nine lost by the enemy. 
This affair is known as the battle of White Plains. 
The attack was not pressed, and Washington fell 
back to a strong position at North Castle, where it 
was useless to think of attacking him. 

These movements and the resulting position made 
the two forts untenable, useless, and mere traps. 
The Congress and the New York Convention pro- 
tested strongly against abandoning them, as local 
authorities always do against abandoning territory 
to invasion ; but Washington ordered Putnam and 
Greene to get their troops and munitions away with- 
out delay, allowing Greene, in whom he had great 
confidence, a discretion as to the time and the ne- 
cessity of evacuation. Congress sent Greene a per- 
emptory order to hold on save on the direst extrem- 



144 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

ity. Washington was absent, superintending the 
fortification of West Point, higher up the river. 
Greene believed that Fort Washington could be 
held, and so re-enforced it. Washington returned on 
the 14th, but that very night several British vessels 
passed up between the forts, and on the 15th Howe 
moved on the place with an overwhelming force. 
He carried it by assault on November i6th, after a 
gallant defense, when the British lost five hundred 
men, to the American loss of one hundred and fifty; 
but the British general captured three thousand of 
the best troops the Americans had in the field, and 
an immense quantity of artillery and small arms. 

Washington was on the Jersey side of the river 
with six thousand men, and Lee on the east side with 
seven thousand. He ordered Lee to join him, but 
Lee, then senior major general and next in rank to 
the commander in chief, dallied, and lost time in 
obeying. His own ambition and his own promotion 
were the only motives for his conduct, and he was 
engaged in exaggerating his services in the Southern 
campaign and aggrandizing his reputation among the 
inefficient Congressmen at Philadelphia. He was a 
traitor in his heart then, as he was certainly a traitor 
in fact and deed soon after ; but no proof has yet 
been discovered as to his treachery at this precise 
period. It seems as if he intended by his desertion 
of his commander in chief to secure his destruction 
in New Jersey, when he would have certainly suc- 
ceeded to the chief command, and then might have 
enacted the rdle of General Monk and become the 
Duke of Manhattan, as that traitor became the Duke 
of Albemarle. 

But neither *' malice domestic," nor treachery, nor 



THE NEW YORK CAMPAIGN. 145 

cowardice in subordinates, nor incompetence in Con- 
gress, could shake the will, the patience, the fortitude, 
or the courage of the man who had spent four days 
and nights in the saddle in saving Braddock's rout. 
The American forces were nearly disarmed by the 
losses at Fort Washington. It was almost dispersed 
by the capture of men there, and by Lee's deser- 
tion. If Howe turned shortly across the river and 
pressed rapidly on Philadelphia, the rebel capital 
would be captured and the rebel Congress dispersed, 
and the nucleus of rebellion destroyed. It was im- 
possible to save Philadelphia, but it was possible to 
interpose an army as a protection to Congress and as 
a rallying point for the country. Sir Guy Carleton 
had gone into winter quarters at St. John's, on Lake 
Champlain, The campaign of division had failed. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE NEW JERSEY CAMPAIGN THE DICTATORSHIP. 

The conditions which confronted Washington, 
then, were the necessity of saving New England and 
covering Philadelphia at the same time with an army- 
demoralized by defeat and retreat, starvation and 
physical want, reduced by the expiration of enlist- 
ments, and without hope or expectation of final suc- 
cess. A new expedition, under Sir John Burgoyne, 
was being prepared in Canada to move on the old 
French line of invasion by Lake Champlain. Lord 
Cornwallis was placed in command of a flying column, 
to operate in New Jersey by a move on Philadelphia, 
while Sir William Howe was collecting a fleet at 
New York for an object as yet unrevealed. It was 
so clear that he ought to have moved a land force 
up the Hudson, convoyed and supported by his fleet, 
and joined Burgoyne, who was marching south, that 
Washington could not persuade himself that he was 
not about to do so. His observation of General 
Howe during the campaign on Long Island, and the 
subsequent operations on Throg's Neck, White Plains, 
and Fort Washington, had convinced him that the 
British general was quite as likely to make an im- 
proper move as a proper one, and he was therefore 
much puzzled to divine his intentions. 

Burgoyne captured Ticonderoga without a strug- 



THE NEW JERSEY CAMPAIGN. 147 

gle, and the northern line was opened. On Novem- 
ber 2ist Howe crossed his infantry over the Hudson, 
and then had the shorter line to Philadelphia. He 
started Cornwallis toward that place, and nothing 
could be done but to interpose the American army 
between the attack and the objective. Washington 
fell back until, on December 8, 1776, he crossed the 
Delaware into Pennsylvania with three thousand 
starved, naked, and badly armed men — the remnant 
of the army of Boston and New York, but with all 
his ammunition intact. He destroyed all the boats 
on the river for miles up and down. When Corn- 
wallis came up, the evening of the crossing, he was 
for pushing on at once; but Howe, who had joined 
him, thought it not worth while, as the contest was 
virtually ended, and it was useless to expend un- 
necessary energy in pursuit of an enemy whose army 
had nearly dissolved in the preceding twenty days of 
pursuit and retreat. 

Congress fled to Baltimore, where they passed a 
resolution making Washington dictator, and then 
waited, panic-stricken, for what might happen. At 
this time an incident occurred which might have 
been disastrous, but was rather fortunate to the 
American cause. Lee followed Cornwallis, on his 
flank, through New Jersey. He would not help 
Washington. He could not desert openly, for that 
would have destroyed his value, and he would have 
commanded no price for his treachery. An interview 
with the British commander in chief was absolutely 
necessary to arrange the terms of what was to be 
sold and what to be paid. A conference under a flag 
of truce would have attracted attention and required 
explanation. W^ritten communications were tedious 
II 



148 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

and dangerous, as was afterward proved in the case 
of Andre and Arnold. 

So Lee, with that profuse versatility of resource 
and that wide experience of expedients which service 
under many flags and divers religions and in various 
countries had given him, resorted to the simple one 
of camping outside his picket lines and sending word 
to the nearest British picket where he was. He was, 
of course, gobbled up by the cavalry, and the second 
in command of the Continental army became a pris- 
oner. He had his conference and arranged his terms. 
What they were has not yet been discovered, but 
Time, the inexorable foe to secrets and concealments 
of state matters, will surely reveal his entire turpitude. 
Within this generation there has been discovered 
among the family papers of Sir Henry Strachey, 
General Howe's secretary from 1775 to 1778, a decu- 
mbent in Lee's handwriting and indorsed by Sir Henry 
— " Mr. Lee's plan, March 29, 1777." * 

In this paper Lee shows that, if Maryland could 
be overawed and the people of Virginia prevented 
from sending aid to Pennsylvania, then Philadelphia 
might be taken and held, and the operations of the 
" rebel government " paralyzed. The Tory party 
was known to be strong in Pennsylvania, and the 
hesitation and tardiness of Maryland in acquiescing 
in the move for independence seemed to prove that 
the loyalist feeling was very strong there. Lee as- 
serted, of his own personal knowledge — he owned a 
plantation on the upper Potomac, in Virginia, on the 
Maryland border — that the people of Maryland and 
Pennsylvania were nearly all loyalists, who only 

* Vide Appendix A. 



THE NEW JERSEY CAMPAIGN. j^q 

awaited a British army to declare themselves for the 
Government and King George. 

He therefore recommended that fourteen thou- 
sand men should drive Washington out of New Jer- 
sey and capture Philadelphia, while the remainder of 
Howe's army, four thousand in number, should go 
by sea to the Chesapeake and occupy Alexandria 
and Annapolis. Four days after the date of this re- 
markable document Howe wTote to Lord George 
Germaine that he had another expedition in mind, 
which might modify the plan of the campaign of the 
Hudson. With this paper in the hands of the British 
commander in chief, Lee was exchanged, and received 
in the American army with distinguished honors. All 
the general officers went out to meet him and escort 
him to headquarters, and the entire body of troops 
was paraded to salute him; and he in the pay of the 
enemy, with the commission of second in command 
of the American army in his pocket ! 

Whatever judgment posterity and the world may 
pass on the motives or the conduct of the actors 
in the great war between the States of i86i-'65, 
Americans at all times will be proud of the great 
pregnant fact, that when the men conspicuous on 
each side in that Titanic struggle had once taken 
sides not one ever faltered in his faith, but all were 
firm to the end. Among the million of Americans in 
that war, arrayed in arms, not one Charles Lee or 
Benedict Arnold ever lived or died. This proves 
that the American has, in the intervening century, 
developed a higher standard of duty, a nobler ideal 
of fidelity to honor, than prevailed with the genera- 
tion that made and fought the War of the Revolution. 

The capture of Lee was a great surprise to, and 



I^O GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

made a profound impression on, the Americans. He 
was a showy, noisy swash-buckler, and his loud voice 
and blatant braggadocio had imposed on the public. 
He had been a lieutenant colonel in the British army, 
had served under kings and emperors, and was dec- 
orated with sundry ribbons and brummagem stars and 
crosses, and the simple-minded country folk thought 
he must of necessity be a great soldier. This provin- 
cial admiration for the ways and habits and manners 
and morals of the aristocracy is not yet extinct among 
Americans, and may still be observed flourishing on 
Manhattan Island, or at Newport, Rhode Island. 

Washington was absolutely destitute of it. His 
experience in the Braddock campaign had obliterated 
the sentiment of reverence and admiration for home 
people and home ways in which he had been bred, 
and he believed and knew that Americans were in 
heart, brain, muscle, fidelity — in every intellectual 
and moral attribute — the peers of any race who ever 
lived. He considered Arnold, Morgan, and Greene 
as good soldiers and as qualified generals as Sir John 
Burgoyne, or Lord Cornwallis, or Sir Henry Clinton. 
Rank and titles did not confuse his mind in the least, 
and he looked straight through all embellishments 
into the very hearts of men and of things. Lee was, 
however, second in command, and the cause would 
lose prestige, and the army morale^ if its second officer 
were permitted to remain a prisoner of war. He 
therefore exchanged Lee, not because he considered 
him of value, but in loyal discharge of his duty to 
his comrade and the cause. 

By the middle of December, Howe, believing 
that the rebellion was crushed, withdrew to New 
York, leaving strong detachments at Trenton and 



BATTLE OF 
T K E N T O K 




THE NEW JERSEY CAMPAIGN. 151 

Burlington. Cornwallis accompanied him, with the 
intention of carrying the news of the great achieve- 
ment to England. After the capture of Lee, Sulli- 
van and Gates promptly reported with his command 
to Washington, who was thus re-enforced to about 
six thousand men. But he dare not remain idle. 
Congress had dispersed, and the army was dissolv- 
ing. He determined on an aggressive movement, 
the daring of which would greatly increase the chance 
of success. He arranged a plan of attack — for Gates 
to cross the river and attack Donop at Burlington ; 
Ewing to cross directly on Trenton ; while he, with 
twenty-four hundred men, was to pass the river nine 
miles above and move down to support Ewing in his 
attack on Rahl and his Hessians. Gates begged for 
a leave of absence, and left his command in charge 
of John Cadwalader, while he posted to Baltimore to 
intrigue for promotion into Congress. 

Washington proposed to move on Christmas Day, 
1776; but the weather became very cold, the river 
filled with floating ice. Cadwalader tried in vain to 
get over, but the ice prevented. Ewing, deterred by 
the weather, did not attempt to move, and by even- 
ing the commander in chief knew that the attack 
must be abandoned unless he attempted it unsup- 
ported either on his right or his left. It was a con- 
dition which required the greatest risk ; for to do 
nothing was defeat, and to fail was nothing less. 
During the night of the 25th he crossed in a blind- 
ing storm of sleet and snow, and led his forlorn hope 
in person. Pie reached the other bank, nine miles 
above Trenton, and pressed swiftly down by two 
roads on the point of attack. Sullivan led one col- 
umn down the river road, and Greene the other on 



5^ 



GEN E R AL \V ASII INGTON. 



the road to the left, accompanied by General Wash- 
ington himself. 

About daylight Sullivan reported tluit his mus- 
kets had been rendered useless by the wet. The 
reply was, " Tell the general to give them the bayo- 
net. The town must be carried." At daylight they 
struck the enemy's pickets, and went into the town 
with them. The surprise was complete. Washing- 
ton's guns commanded the streets of the town be- 
fore the garrison could be formed; the commanding 
oflieer, Rahl, was killed ; a small force of Yagers and 
light dragoons escaped, and the rest were captured ; 
one thousand prisoners, with their arms, equipage, 
and wagons, were taken. Washington immediately 
withdrew across the river with his spoils. By noon 
of the 27th Cadwalader crossed at Burlington, but 
Donop fell back to Princeton, leaving his sick and 
wounded and all his heavy arms and baggage. Wash- 
ington reoccupied Trenton on the 29th. When the 
news of the catastrophe reached New York, Corn- 
wallis countermanded his luggage from the packet 
which was about to convey him to England, and 
rode in a gallop to Princeton, where he found Col- 
onel Donop intrenching. 

On January 2, 1777, Cornwallis, with eight thou- 
sand men. moved on Trenton, where he found Wash- 
ington strongly posted behuid the Assunpink, a 
small stream which tlows into the Delaware just 
south of Trenton. Cornwallis's men were worn 
down by the day's march, but he made several at- 
tempts to force the bridge over the creek, and was 
easily repulsed. He therefore went into camp, and 
sent back to Princeton for the two thousand men 
left there with Donop. He proposed, the next morn- 



TIIIC NEW JI:KSKY CAMPAKIN. 153 

in^, with tliis rc-ciiforcciiicnl to turn the American 
ri;;ht flank, roll liim back on the river, and capture 
the whole force — '* to l^a^^: the old fox," as he said. 
The position was plain to the American ccjmmandcr. 
Donop would l)e up the next day, and then he 
would have another Long Island retreat over a wide 
river. Instead of waiting for Donop, it might he 
best to meet iiim half way. He summoned a coun- 
cil of war; but a council of war never fights. He 
proposed to leave his camp-fires burning, and move 
around C'ornwallis so as to strike Princeton by day- 
break. It had been snowing, sleeting, and raining 
for several days. 'J'he chief of artillery reported 
that guns could not be moved ; the quartermaster 
general that no horses could pull the wagons. 
Iwerybody agreed that the roads had no bottom. 
Washington held on to his opinion with his usual 
patience and pertinacity, explaining what immense 
advantages would accrue from the movement, and 
persistently urged that it be made. V>y ten o'clock 
the change occurred that he expected and was wait- 
ing for. He opened the door, looked out into the 
night starless and moonless, and turned to the coun- 
cil. "(Jentlemen," said he, "Providence has de- 
cided for us— the wind has shifted; the army will 
move in two hours." In two hours the roads were 
frozen as hard as if macadamized, and the troops 
marched over the firm ground, the wheels muffled 
and as noiseless as the march of the dead. 

At daylight Cornwallis's pickets reported that 
something unusual had taken place in the American 
camp, and his scouts soon brought him word that it 
was empty. He was dazed. ^' Where had the old 
fox gone to earth? Where was his hiding-place?" 



J ^4 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

were the astounding questions he was to solve, when 
away off to the northeast the opening guns at Prince- 
ton sounded his sharp reveille. He had been sur- 
prised as Rahl had been, and outwitted as Sir Wil- 
liam at Long Island. 

About sunrise Washington's advance came in 
contact with Donop's leading brigade marching on 
Trenton to help Cornwallis. General Hugh Mercer, 
the aid to Prince Charlie at Culloden, and the com- 
rade of the commander in chief at the Monongahela, 
was in command of the right brigade, and he at- 
tacked at once. The British resistance was vigorous, 
and they pressed Mercer firmly. He was killed at 
the outset, and his lines were going back before the 
British bayonet, when Washington galloped up, took 
charge of the field, rallied his troops within forty 
yards of the British line, brought the whole of his 
command into action on the double quick, and in 
twenty minutes had the enemy on the run. The 
British lost two hundred in killed and wounded, and 
three hundred prisoners. The firing to the northeast 
stirred Cornwallis up, and he pushed out to get to 
Princeton as soon as possible. But a thaw had set 
in, the bridges were broken, the roads and streams 
impassable, and by the time he reached Princeton 
'' the old fox " had disappeared with his plunder. 

It was Washington's intention to swoop down on 
New Brunswick, where there was a depot of pro- 
visions, arms, and supplies; but by the time the 
affair at Princeton was over the men were too tired 
for further exertion. They had had no sleep the 
night before, and the cold night march and the sharp 
affair of the morning had taken the spring out of 
them. They must have refreshment and rest. In- 



THE NEW JERSEY CAMPAIGN. 155 

Stead, therefore, of making a dash on New Bruns- 
wick, the American general moved off to Morris- 
town, where he occupied a strong position on a 
range of hills. Cornwallis pressed on to New 
Brunswick, intent on saving that post. In a few 
days Putnam moved from Philadelphia to Princeton. 

By the middle of January, 1777, this then was the 
position : the American right wing under Putnam, 
at Princeton ; the center under Washington, at Mor- 
ristown ; the left under Heath, on the Hudson. The 
British retained only New Brunswick, Amboy, and 
Paulus Hook (Jersey City). The occupation of 
Jersey had failed, the attempt on the " rebel Capi- 
tal " had been frustrated, and, after two years of 
struggle " to retake, reoccupy, and repossess," and 
to reduce to loyalty the rebellious colonies, the 
three posts in New Jersey above named were all 
that remained to show for results. 

This campaign was the most brilliant one of the 
War of the Revolution. Stonewall Jackson's valley 
campaign, in 1862, reminds the military student of it. 
Cornwallis — the ablest soldier that Britain furnished 
— gentleman and knight as he was, generously ex- 
pressed his admiration for it. Stedman, his histo- 
rian and comrade, considers that Washington's most 
remarkable and strongest marked characteristic was 
his supreme and unfaltering courage. To cross a 
wide and rapid river in winter, by night, with an 
inferior, half-clad and half-fed force, surprise and 
capture a veteran command of regulars, to make off 
with his booty, and then reoccupy his position in 
front of Cornwallis with thrice his numbers, fight 
him, hold him back, elude him and strike his rear, 
and make him give up all the territory won by the 



56 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



preceding campaign, was an achievement of tactics 
and of strategy, of endurance and of courage, which 
nothing but supreme audacity, pugnacity, and cour- 
age could accomplish. 

The same characteristics were afterward observed 
in Robert E. Lee, son of " Light Horse Harry " Lee, 
of the Legion, no kin to the vain braggart, coward, 
and traitor who tried to lose the Battle of Monmouth 
and to sell the American army. Robert Lee's friends 
were wont to criticise his pugnacity and daring. 
They said he would run any risk for a fight. The 
courage displayed by Washington in this short cam- 
paign, not the physical courage of the fighter but the 
intellectual intrepidity of the thinker, at once won 
him the respect of military men and military nations 
all over the world, and, what was of equal im- 
portance, the confidence of the people at home. 
There is no doubt that there was a widespread 
dissatisfaction with his caution and his slowness. 
The gentlemen who sit at a safe distance study- 
ing the map, unshaken by responsibility, always 
know more about war than the generals who are 
fighting it, and are liberal with their advice — after 
the event. The debaters are the most impatient for 
action by others. 

The dispersion of the debating society at Phila- 
delphia had silenced them for a time, and panic had 
made them shift all responsibility from themselves, 
by conferring on Washington the powers of dictator- 
ship. But this was no proof of confidence. On the 
contrary, it was intended by very many as a trap, to 
prove the utter incompetence of the commander in 
chief, and make way for superseding him in com- 
mand. Charles Lee and Gates were both intriguing, 



THE NEW JERSEY CAMPAIGN. 157 

and undermining and depreciating the ability of their 
chief. But the New Jersey campaign settled all that, 
and public confidence arose to support Washington 
to such an extent that, when subsequently a wretched 
cabal in the army was formed to depose him, pub- 
licity was the only punishment required to over- 
whelm the parties to it with shame, confusion, and 
ignominy. Confidence at home and reputation 
abroad were the consequences to Washington and the 
cause. But reputation and confidence did not fur- 
nish meat, rations, breeches, or shoes. 

The Christmas gift by Washington to the Con- 
gress saved the Revolution. The terms of enlist- 
ment of a majority of his troops expired on the 
ist of January; but with provisions abundant, the 
plunder of the Hessian quarters and knapsacks in 
hand, and the glorious enthusiasm of victory thrill- 
ing every nerve, the soldiers were induced to stay 
a few weeks longer. Washington made himself 
personally liable for their pay, and pledged his entire 
estate to secure it. John Stark and others followed 
his example, and the army was held together on a 
halt before final dissolution. 

Washington was untiring in his petitions to Con- 
gress and to the States. He appealed to Governor 
Johnson, of Maryland, his associate in the Ohio and 
in the Potomac companies, who had nominated him 
in Congress to be commander in chief, for im- 
mediate and prompt re-enforcements. '' I have no 
army," he said. " The men with me are too few 
to fight, and not enough to run away with." He 
urged Patrick Henry, Governor of Virginia, and 
Jonathan Trumbull, Governor of Connecticut, in 
the same terms. On March 6th he wrote to Gov- 



158 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



ernor Trumbull from Morristown : " I tell you in con- 
fidence that after the 15th of this month, when the 
time of General Lincoln's militia expires, I shall be 
left with the remains of five Virginia regiments, not 
amounting to more than as many hundred men, and 
parts of two or three other Continental battalions, 
all very weak. The remainder of the army will be 
composed of small parties of militia from this State 
(New Jersey) and Pennsylvania, on which little de- 
pendence can be put, as they come and go when 
they please." 

On March 14th, also from Morristown, Washing- 
ton wrote to the President of Congress : '' From the 
most accurate estimate I can now form, the whole of 
our numbers in Jersey fit for duty at this time is 
under three thousand. These, nine hundred and 
eighty-one excepted, are militia, and stand engaged 
only until the last of this month." Thus he had, as 
the sole remnant of the Continental military strength, 
about five hundred Virginians and four hundred and 
eighty-one Marylanders. That was almost all that 
remained of the rebellion. New England was quiet, 
New York and New Jersey nearly hostile, and Penn- 
sylvania utterly indifferent. 

When Captain Morris's troop of Philadelphia 
Light Horse tour of duty as escort at headquarters 
had expired, they were relieved with a compli- 
mentary order they and their descendants may well 
be proud of. " I take this opportunity," said the order 
of the commander in chief, '' of returning my most 
sincere thanks to the captain and to the gentle- 
men who compose the troop for the many essential 
services which they have rendered to their country, 
and to me personally, during the course of this 



THE NEW JERSEY CAMPAIGN. 15^ 

severe campaign. Though composed of gentlemen 
of fortune, they have shown a noble example of 
discipline and subordination, and in several actions 
have displayed a spirit of bravery which will ever do 
honor to them, and will ever be gratefully remem- 
bered by me." 

And with the Light Horse went the brightest spark 
of chivalry from Pennsylvania in the army. The phil- 
osophy of Penn had taught that thrift, energy, and 
the accumulation of material means, with peace, 
order, and prosperity, are the main objects of life 
and the chief end of man ; and the consequence was 
the commonwealth could not understand why such 
imaginary, remote, iridescent, impalpable things as 
justice, right, and liberty could be worth the sacrifice 
of present comfort, of fat beeves, of well-fed swine, 
and even risk of bodily hurt. The idea did not pene- 
trate the bucolic mind during the whole war, and the 
Philadelphia troop is the most picturesque, chivalric 
exhibition of sentiment, devotion, and courage made 
from that State during all those trying times. That 
troop proved time and again, as Lee's and Washing- 
ton's Legion subsequently proved in the Carolinas, 
that there is room in society for the order of gentle- 
men, and that in time of stress it is well for the 
State to have a class to call on who will die as gayly 
as they dance, and will pour out their blood, as they 
were wont to do their fortunes, for faith and honor, 
for sentiment and ideals. Three battalions of Asso- 
ciators were raised in Philadelphia, officered by Col- 
onels John Bayard, John Cadwalader, and Jacob Mor- 
gan, knightly gentlemen, and did gallant service. 
They and the Light Horse are the most brilliant 
contributions of Pennsylvania to the cause. 



l6o GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

To Washington, with his nine hundred, Johnson 
brought seventeen hundred from Maryland. They 
were not very effective, but they were courage and 
sympathy, hearts as well as hands, like a torch to the 
lost traveler in the desert. They upheld the spirit of 
resistance until the country along the Chesapeake 
could rally; for it had come to be that the chief re- 
sistance was henceforth to be made by the English 
on the Chesapeake. New England stood ready, pre- 
pared to repel invasion and expel intruders. John 
Stark did the first at Bennington, Benedict Arnold 
the last for a British raid on Danbury, Connecticut. 

Washington remained in winter quarters at Mor- 
ristown, watching his enemy at New York. The 
junction of Howe with Burgoyne in upper New York 
was of prime importance, but the occupation of the 
"rebel capital" at Philadelphia, the permanent dis- 
persion of the rebel Congress, and the separation of 
the Eastern and Middle States from the Southern, 
was of equal value. New England paralyzed, New 
York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania indifferent, 
Georgia " restored " to loyalty ; the Tories of North 
and South Carolina gave full occupation to the Whigs 
of those States, so that they were unable to re- 
enforce the nucleus of opposition, the Continental 
Army. Sir William Howe may well have argued that 
a division of the rebellion on the line of the Dela- 
ware was infinitely more pregnant of results than 
that on the Hudson. 

The Southern States subdued, the Eastern and 
Middle States cut off and neutralized, the rebellion 
on the Chesapeake and the gallant three counties on 
the Delaware would have been easily crushed under 
the guns of the British fleet. The great bays, the 



THE NEW JERSEY CAMPAIGN. i6l 

wide and deep rivers, gave the command of the 
water entire control over the land. So Washington 
watched and waited. Howe might move up the 
North River, or up the Delaware, or up the Chesa- 
peake. Either move might be disastrous to the 
American cause. Each must be met and defeated. 

The county committees in lower New Jersey, in 
lower Delaware, on the eastern shore of Maryland 
and Virginia, were notified to keep a sharp lookout 
night and day for the fleet, and to report its appear- 
ance and progress as soon as it was identified. Lines 
of couriers were provided from county to county to 
transmit the news to headquarters. 

On April 15th, Washington wrote from Morns- 
town to Landon Carter: *' The designs of the enemy 
are not yet clearly unfolded, but Philadelphia is the 
object in view ; however, this may or may not be 
the case, as the North River must also be the object 
of very great importance to them, while they have 
an army in Canada and are desirous of a junction 
with it." On May 28th, he moved from Morristown 
to Middlebrook, fifteen miles south, on the Raritan 
River. The army then consisted of forty-three regi- 
ments in ten brigades and five divisions, under Major 
Generals Nathanael Greene, Adam Stephen, John 
Sullivan, Benjamin Lincoln, and Lord Stirling. The 
artillery was under Henry Knox. They mustered 
about seven thousand men, mostly militia, from New 
Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Vir- 
ginia. The New York and Eastern troops were 
guarding the line of the Hudson and Lake Cham- 
plain chiefly at Peekskill and Ticonderoga. 

On July ist, Washington wrote to Putnam from 
Middlebrook, and on the 4th to Governor Trumbull, 



l62 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

that Howe was in motion, and " that, upon the whole, 
there is the strongest reason to conclude that he will 
push up the river immediately to co-operate with 
the army from Canada, which it appears certainly 
has in view an attack on Ticonderoga and the several 
dependent posts." At the same time he moved back 
to Morristown, to be in position for " succoring the 
Eastern States, and to be near enough to oppose any 
design upon Philadelphia." In a week news arrived 
from Schuyler, in command on the upper Hudson, of 
the evacuation of Ticonderoga and its occupation 
by Burgoyne. Washington moved out of Morris- 
town to Pompton Plains, and then farther on toward 
the Hudson. It had then, in his opinion, become so 
plainly the policy of Howe to co-operate with Bur- 
goyne that he prepared to support the force at Peeks- 
kill on the Hudson. 

Howe had collected a fleet of one hundred and 
twenty vessels at New York. By the last of July 
he put to sea. At the same time Putnam captured a 
dispatch from Howe to Burgoyne, advising him that 
the fleet was to go eastward to Boston. Putnam 
sent the captured dispatch to headquarters. Wash- 
ington understood the ruse at once. The dispatch 
was intended to deceive and to be captured. It said 
the enemy was to move northeast — that meant was 
really to move southwest. Without a moment's hesi- 
tation he ordered Sullivan's and Heath's divisions to 
cross the Hudson and march to Philadelphia. Howe 
appeared at the Capes of the Delaware. Washington 
moved over to that river, but it was so clearly the 
interest of Howe to join hands with Burgoyne, that, 
as he wrote to Gates, he "could not help casting his 
eyes continually behind him." 



THE NEW JERSEY CAMPAIGN. 163 

Washington pressed on and took position at 
Chester, fifteen miles below Philadelphia. But on 
August ist he received news by express that on the 
day before the enemy had sailed out of the Capes in 
an easterly course. After a week's delay, and not 
hearing of Howe, he started the army back toward 
the Hudson. He camped for a few days at Schuylkill 
Falls, five miles north of Philadelphia, and hearing 
nothing of Howe's fleet, on August 8th the whole 
army started back for the East, with about eleven 
thousand men, mostly militia, " badly armed and 
worse clothed," as Lafayette, who then joined for 
the first time, recorded in his journal. On August 
loth, at night, a dispatch was received from the 
President of Congress that the fleet had been seen 
off Sinepuxent, on the ocean side of the eastern 
shore of Maryland, on the 7th instant. 

The army was then at Neshaminy camp, twenty 
miles north of Philadelphia, on the Old York road, 
where it halted until further information should be 
obtained of Howe. From here he sent Morgan and 
his riflemen to Gates, who had been assigned to the 
Northern army, then being assembled about Albany, 
to intercept Burgoyne. Washington was of opinion 
that Howe's object was Charleston, *' though for 
what sufficient reason, unless he expected to drag 
this army after him, by appearing at different places, 
and thereby leave the country open for General 
Clinton to march out and endeavor to form a junc- 
tion with General Burgoyne, I am at a loss to de- 
termine," as he wrote to Gates on August 20th. 

The next day a council of war decided that, as 
the enemy's fleet had most probably sailed for 
Charleston, it was not expedient for the army to 
12 



164 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



march southward, and that it should move immedi- 
ately toward the North River. The next day the 
fleet was reported sailing up the Chesapeake. Sulli- 
van was ordered to rejoin with his division as 
promptly as possible, and the next morning every- 
thing was put on the march for Philadelphia and 
onward. He informed the troops, in a general order, 
of Stark's brilliant victory at Bennington on the 
i6th of August. 

On Sunday, August 24th, part of the army, 
amounting to ten thousand men, with Washington 
at its head, marched through Philadelphia, down 
Front Street to Chestnut to the Common, and crossed 
the Schuylkill at the Middle Ferry, Market Street. 
They were followed next day by General Francis 
Nash's North Carolina Brigade and Colonel Proctor's 
Brigade of Artillery. They made a fine impression 
with their solid marching and seasoned appearance 
and with green leaves in their hats, though they were 
dirty and ragged, and were a revelation to the faint- 
hearted Whigs and jubilant Tories, who had no idea 
that the rebels could muster such a force of fighting 
men. He pressed on through Wilmington, where he 
heard that Howe was landing eighteen thousand men 
at the head of the bay. Washington proceeded with 
all his cavalry up to the enemy's lines, to reconnoitre 
his position and his force, and employed the next 
three days in acquiring personal knowledge of the 
roads and topography. 

Howe landed on August 25th, and by September 
7th had moved only seven miles. The American 
army fell back to Chadd's Ford, over the Brandywine, 
a small stream thirteen miles north of Wilmington, 
where it awaited the British attack. The position 



THE NEW JERSEY CAMPAIGN. 165 

on the north side overlooked that on the south, and 
during the day it became apparent that the skirmish 
at the ford opposite the American center was a feint 
to cover some ulterior purpose. The British army 
numbered eighteen thousand men, the American 
about eleven thousand. Wayne, with the artillery, 
held the center, and Greene was in reserve, with Sulli- 
van on the right and Armstrong on the left. Dur- 
ing the morning it got to be understood that the 
body of troops in front of the ford in plain sight was 
Knyphausen with his Hessians, and after a time re- 
ports began to come in from scouts that a heavy 
column was moving round the right toward the upper 
forks of the Brandywine. The enemy had therefore 
divided his force while within striking distance, and 
Washington promptly gave orders to Greene to cross 
and attack, supported by Wayne. 

The movement was precisely that of McDowell 
at First Manassas, and of Jackson at Chancellors- 
ville. Beauregard's countermove to his adversary 
was to cross Bull Run and attack his reserve and 
trains at Centerville. This would have been success- 
ful, but was not made on account of an inexplicable 
accident. There is no record of Hooker's intention 
or attempt to countercheck Lee's move with Jack- 
son at Chancellorsville. When troops are in actual 
contact — when men see each other and are firing at 
each other — it is difficult to disengage and perform 
military evolutions. None but disciplined, and vet- 
eran troops can "change front under fire." 

By the time, then, the formations were being made 
to cross the creek and attack, news came that there 
was no British column moving round the right flank, 
and the order to advance was countermanded. In 



1 66 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

an hour another report of the flank march would 
come in, and preparation be made for an advance, 
and then another contradiction. There was no 
American cavalry to scout or to carry information — 
only a headquarter escort of mounted men. 

In some countries — in every country where people 
are alert, enthusiastic, hot-blooded — tidings of an in- 
vading enemy would be spread on the wings of the 
wind. In Virginia, long afterward, farmers* sons 
and daughters would ride thirty miles in a dark 
night to give information to Lee or Jackson or 
Stuart of some move of the enemy ; and no important 
move was ever made by any Federal general with- 
out being promptly and accurately reported to his 
adversary in ample time to prepare. And McClellan, 
Hooker, or Meade, in Maryland and Pennsylvania, 
were always kept thoroughly posted as to the move- 
ments of their Southern enemies by the country 
people through whose farms and along whose lanes 
and roads they were marching. 

But at Brandywine not a syllable was ever uttered 
to the American commander from the population 
among whom operations were taking place for the 
capture of their capital city and the subjugation of 
their country. Cornwallis marched seventeen miles 
through the open country by daylight, to get in the 
rear, surround, and capture the American army, and 
not a soul in all that thickly settled country raised 
hand or voice to save it. 

The first positive and accurate knowledge the 
Americans had of the British movement was when, 
late in the afternoon, Cornwallis appeared in their 
rear. Sullivan tried to change front and check him, 
but that was impossible with his green troops, and 



THE NEW JERSEY CAMPAIGN. 167 

they broke, pouring back over the reserve. Wash- 
ington rode in among them in a tempest of fury, but 
nothing could stop them. Greene held his command 
well in hand and moved back in good order and per- 
fect deliberation, and saved the wreck the rout had 
left. Washington fell back to his old position be- 
hind the Schuylkill, and for two weeks was engaged 
in manoeuvring to defend the fords. At last Howe 
and his army crossed. 

Washington wrote to the President of Congress, 
on September 23d: " The enemy, by a variety of per- 
plexing manoeuvers through a country from which 
I could not derive the least intelligence (being to a 
man disaffected), contrived to pass the Schuylkill 
last night at the Fatland (half a mile below Valley 
Forge), and other fords in the neighborhood of it. 
... At least a thousand men are barefoot, and have 
performed the marches in that condition." 

At 10 A. M. on September 26th, Lord Cornwallis, 
with two battalions of British and Hessian grena- 
diers, two squadrons of the Sixteenth Dragoons, and 
the artillery, with the chief engineer. Captain John 
Montresor, the commanding officer of artillery, the 
quartermaster, and the adjutant general, marched in 
and took possession of the city of Philadelphia, 
amid the acclamations of some thousands of the 
inhabitants, mostly women and children. The men 
would not appear. So, at last, the rebel capital was 
taken, their Congress dispersed, and their army nearly 
routed and driven in disorder from the field. Howe 
camped his army at Germantown, near Philadelphia, 
occupying the city with a few picked troops and 
fixing general headquarters there. 

The expulsion of Congress, the seizure of the capi- 



1 68 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

tal, and the rout at Brandywine, had depressed the 
morale of the country to its lowest point. It seemed 
utterly impossible that the militia could be braced 
up to meet, much less to attack, the invincible regu- 
lars, who had driven them whenever and wherever 
they could get at them. A victory over the British 
would be of inestimable value. A gallant trial of 
strength would restore confidence, at least, to troops 
and to the country. The exposed position of Howe 
invited enterprise similar to that at Trenton, and the 
American commander promptly took advantage of 
his opportunity. He divided his army into three col- 
umns of attack, and at 7 p. m., October 3d, moved out 
of his camp to strike the British just before day next 
morning. The camp was about twelve miles from 
the enemy. The attacking force was eight thousand 
Continentals and three thousand militia. 

The attack was to be made by the right wing 
under Sullivan, accompanied by the commander in 
chief, moving down the road on which the, village 
was built, with his division of Maryland troops sup- 
ported by the division of Wayne. His reserve was 
under Lord Stirling, of Nash's North Carolina and 
Maxwell's Virginia brigades. Sullivan was to attack 
the left wing, while General Armstrong, with the 
Pennsylvania militia, was to pass to the left of the 
enemy and attack in the rear. Greene, with the left 
wing, was to move to the right of the enemy and 
march upon the Market House, about the center of 
the camp; while McDougall, with his division, was 
to attack in flank, and Smallwood's division of Mary- 
land militia, and Forman's New Jersey brigade, mak- 
ing a circuit by the Old York road, were to attack 
in the rear. 



THE NEW JERSEY CAMPAIGN. 169 

The plan was fatally defective. It proposed to 
march green troops twelve miles in the night. None 
but veterans can make such a movement. The 
darkness disorganizes the command, and destroys the 
control of field and company officers over the troops. 
File-closers become powerless. And after such a 
march with such troops, four separate attacks in 
front, both flanks and rear to be made by four sepa- 
rate commands at the same instant of time, were im- 
possible. It was impracticable, as the result showed. 
But Washington, knowing the value of vigor and en- 
terprise in war, that surprise and the unexpected are 
wonderful forces in attack, hoped to repeat the ex- 
ploit of Trenton. And the way in the darkness was 
long and weary. An unprecedented fog obscured 
the stars by night and the sun by day. It was after 
daybreak when Sullivan came in touch with the 
enemy. He attacked at once, and drove them down 
the road in rout. Neither the right nor left attacks 
were up, and Sullivan had to do all the fighting. 

Colonel Musgrave, of the Fortieth Regiment of 
the Line of the British army, with six of his companies, 
threw himself into a strong stone house belonging 
to Chew, right in the line of attack, and held on to it, 
firing on the Americans as they passed. Sullivan 
stopped to take it, lost half an hour, and then pressed 
on a mile farther and broke the enemy's left. Every- 
thing was now in retreat, and Washington's audac- 
ity about to be crowned with magnificent success. 
The line in front pursuing and pressing the enemy 
saw the attack on Chew's house in the rear, and faced 
about to go to the assistance of their comrades. The 
enemy supposed it was a retreat and immediately 
advanced, and the whole army broke into rout. They 



70 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



were within ten minutes of victory, if it had not been 
for the stone house. Washington rode to the head 
of the fugitives, rallied fragments, and with them 
charged the advancing line and was driven back, 
again and again to rally, charge, and be repulsed. 
The gallant and warm-hearted Sullivan, knightly 
gentleman as he was, said : *' I saw with great con- 
cern our brave commander in chief exposing himself 
to the hottest fire of the enemy in such a manner 
that regard for my country obliged me to ride to 
him and beg him to retire. He, to gratify me and 
some others, withdrew to a short distance, but his 
intense anxiety for the fate of the day soon brought 
him up again, where he remained until our troops 
had retreated." 

Washington and all the principal officers were 
deeply mortified at the result. They always believed 
that the victory was lost by an accident, and that 
the panic of the troops was unaccountable. It is 
difficult now to get at the hidden influences which 
produced results long past, but a cotemporary, who 
commanded troops at Germantown, has left a recorded 
statement that ''there was too much drinking at 
Germantown " ; and General Stephens, of the Virginia 
Division, was cashiered for drunkenness at this battle. 
To the darkness of the night, the complicated detail 
of movements, the obstacle of Chew's house, and 
Musgrave's six companies, may have been added the 
incapacity of superior officers paralyzed by drink. 
That would account for every misfortune. 

Though the daring enterprise failed and he lost 
the hazard, the moral effect of the movement was 
enormous at home and abroad. That an army that 
had been retreating for a year, and been beaten 



THE NEW JERSEY CAMPAIGN. ipri 

within thirty days, could have been brought to face 
and attack regulars and come within an ace of rout- 
ing them, produced a profound impression on the 
soldiers and statesmen on the Continent. 

Frederick the Great said that the dash on Tren- 
ton was worthy of the greatest general ; and the 
Count de Vergennes told the American Commis- 
sioner at Paris that nothing struck him so much as 
General Washington attacking Howe at German- 
town ; that to bring an army raised within a year to 
such a pass, promised everything. It reminds us of 
McClellan's attack on Lee at Sharpsburg or Antie- 
tam ; not that McClellan got such magnificent fight- 
ing out of his troops — for they did fight superbly — but 
that he got them to fight at all ; men who for the 
preceding year had never fought their enemy but to 
be beaten, and had never faced him but to retreat. 
The fighting at Germantown, as at Sharpsburg, was 
a phenomenon of will and courage in the commander. 

When the army was about dissolving, and the 
Congress itself, paralyzed by inherent imbecility and 
secret treason, was fleeing from town to town, wher- 
ever it could find temporary shelter, it found itself 
at Christmas time, 1776, in brief security at Baltimore. 
It met at a hall in the building on the corner of Lib- 
erty and Baltimore Streets, then the building farthest 
west on the road which led from the Western coun- 
try to tide water. 

Then, while Washington was moving back after 
the surprise at Trenton, and was securing his pris- 
oners and his booty by the retrograde over the 
Delaware, on the 27th of December, 1776, the Con- 
gress passed this resolution : " This Congress, hav- 
ing maturely considered the present crisis, having 



72 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



perfect confidence in the wisdom, vigor, and up- 
rightness of General Washington, do hereby resolve, 
that General Washington shall be, and he is hereby, 
vested with full, ample, and complete powers to raise 
and collect together, in the most speedy and effec- 
tual manner, from any or all of these United States, 
sixteen battalions of infantry in addition to those 
already voted by Congress; to appoint officers for 
the said battalions of infantry ; to raise, officer, and 
equip three thousand light horse and three regiments 
of cavalry, and a corps of engineers, and to establish 
their pay ; to apply to any of the States for such aid 
of the militia as he shall judge necessary; to form 
such magazines of provisions, and in such places, as 
he shall think proper ; to displace and appoint all 
officers under the rank of brigadier general, and to 
fill all vacancies in every department in the Ameri- 
can army ; to take, wherever he may be, whatsoever 
he may want for the use of the army, if the inhabit- 
ants will not sell it, allowing a reasonable price for 
the same; to arrest and confine all persons who re- 
fuse to take Continental currency or are otherwise 
disaffected to the American cause, and to return to 
the State of which they are citizens their names and 
the nature of their offenses, together with the wit- 
nesses to prove them. That the foregoing powers 
be vested in General Washington for and during the 
term of six months from this date, unless sooner de- 
termined by Congress." 

On December 30th the Congress sent a circular 
letter to the Governor of each State, explaining the 
necessity of this extraordinary action, and urging 
that "the fullest influence of your State may be ex- 
erted to aid such levies as the general shall direct 



THE NEW JERSEY CAMPAIGN. 173 

in consequence of the power now given him." They 
also appointed a committee, consisting of Robert 
Morris, George Clymer, and George Walton, to con- 
vey to General Washington a copy of their resolu- 
tions appointing him dictator, who inclosed it to him 
on December 31, 1776. 

On January i, 1777, he wrote to the committee 
from Trenton, where he then was, with Cornwallis 
moving on him from Princeton with the flower of the 
British regulars. He said : " Yours of the 31st of last 
month inclosed to me sundry resolves of Congress, by 
which I find they have done me the honor to intrust 
me with powers, in my military capacity, of the high- 
est nature, and almost unlimited in extent. Instead 
of thinking myself freed from all civil obligations by 
this mark of their confidence, I shall constantly bear 
in mind, that as the sword was the last resort for the 
preservation of our liberties, so it ought to be the 
first thing laid aside when those liberties are firmly 
established." 

Whether this resolution was passed in the enthu- 
siasm of the receipt of the news of the victory at 
Trenton on the preceding morning, or whether it was 
passed in despair at the desperate condition of the 
Revolution, it was clearly an abandonment by Con- 
gress of the struggle, and a confession of its own in- 
capacity to do anything. It meant that, " experience 
having proved that we have neither the capacity nor 
the power to direct or conduct the rebellion, we 
hereby invest you, general, with all the power in- 
trusted to us by our States, or whatever you can 
obtain from them or from anywhere, by hook or by 
crook, to do the best you can under the circum- 
stances. If you can conduct the war, conduct it; if 



174 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

you must make peace, make it ; if you are obliged to 
disperse, take to the woods. We are at the end of 
our rope; we can do nothing further ; we give it up, 
and turn the whole matter over to you." 

To be sure, they pretended to limit the duration 
of the dictatorship to six months or the pleasure of 
the Congress; but the only limit to the power of a 
dictator is the pleasure of the dictator himself. He 
ends it when he thinks public necessity — which is an- 
other term for his personal opinion — requires that it 
should terminate. The prestige of the attack at 
Trenton and Princeton conferred vastly more au- 
thority on the commander in chief than the transi- 
tory resolves of the ambulatory Congress. 

The people felt, and the States knew, that the 
government of the country was at the headquarters 
of the army, and that its counsels and debates were 
conducted under the chapeau of the general in chief. 
The power of public opinion furnished recruits, sus- 
tained the currency, and supplied provisions, as far as 
anything in that direction was done. The resolution 
of Congress effected nothing, and, whether intended 
or not when it was passed, its utter failure to accom- 
plish anything or to strengthen the arm of the gen- 
eral in the field was made the excuse, the reason, 
and the justification for the intrigue of the following 
winter, when it was intended by the Board of War 
to drive him out of the army, and thus accomplish a 
surrender of the struggle. 

Washington's correspondence during this period 
is the most remarkable display of ability ever made 
by any soldier or any statesman. His task was, 
first, to keep an army together so as to furnish a 
nucleus for armed resistance; second, and equally 



THE NEW JERSEY CAMPAIGN. 175 

difficult, to hold the Congress and prevent its dispers- 
ing to the woods and the mountains to escape the 
wrath of the victorious officers of the law ; third, to 
hold up the States to the spirit of resistance, so that, 
whatever happened to the Continental organization, 
armed or civic, military or congressional, the seeds 
of rebellion should be preserved and cherished, and 
the struggle against irresponsible and unlimited 
power should never be abandoned. He, more than 
any man, knew the limitless resources of the Western 
country — West Augusta he once called it — with its 
plains and its mountains, its forests and its valleys, 
its great rivers and its grand unsalted seas. He 
knew that " montani semper liberi'' ; and with the Brit- 
ish occupying every port and garrisoning every capital 
and patrolling every town on tide water, the track- 
less forest and illimitable desert could never be sub- 
dued when held by men of the race he represented. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE TIMES THAT TRIED MEN's SOULS. 

When Howe, on September 26, 1777, occupied 
Philadelphia, the fortunes of America were at their 
lowest ebb. Burgoyne had opened the way from 
Canada by the capture of Ticonderoga, which St. 
Clair had abandoned after his assurance to the com- 
mander in chief that it could and should be held. 
After the evacuation he had disappeared in the wil- 
derness with his troops, and for days there were no 
tidings of him. Sir Henry Clinton had forced the 
Hudson and was pressing on to Albany with every 
prospect of a junction with Burgoyne. That union 
insured the conquest of New England. 

Gates, by his own intrigues and the influence of 
the New England members of Congress, had procured 
the command of the Northern Department, displac- 
ing Schuyler, who, by his family connection, his po- 
litical influence, his services, the confidence the 
country reposed in him, and his patriotic devotion, 
was entitled to and best fitted for the command. 
Washington at once dispatched Gates to his com- 
mand, well instructed as to the strategy of his cam- 
paign. If New England was to be saved, she must 
be saved by her own exertions. He proposed to 
give him a nucleus of veteran Continental troops 
around which the country could rally. He sent 



THE TIMES THAT TRIED MEN'S SOULS. 177 

Morgan and his Virginia riflemen with him, and 
wrote urgent letters to the Governors of Massachu- 
setts and Connecticut, pressing them to hurry their 
militia to the support of Gates and the defense of the 
New England line, and impressing on them the vital 
importance of preventing the junction between Bur- 
goyne and Sir Henry Clinton. 

The moral effect of his exhortations, aided by the 
imminent peril, was prodigious. New England rose 
en masse, and its militia, including many soldiers of 
the last war, of the capture of Louisburg, and of 
Indian fights, rushed to the camp at Albany, bring- 
ing their own arms and rations. No more stalwart 
and determined re-enforcements ever came up in time 
of need. Burgoyne, as he wended his tedious and 
devious way down Lake Champlain, saw the tem- 
pest rising. He wrote to the ministry at home that 
the New Hampshire grants, which had been a wilder- 
ness at the time of the last war, were now peopled 
by the most hardy, daring, and rebellious race in 
America, "who hang like a gathering storm on my 
left." He reached the southern end of Lake George 
and crossed the Hudson, keeping up a casual and 
uncertain communication with Sir Henry Clinton. 

Around him gathered the yeomanry of New Eng- 
land—front, flanks, and rear— as they had enveloped 
Lord Percy on that retreat from Lexington. They 
were everywhere. They were untiring. By the mid- 
dle of October Burgoyne sent word to Sir Henry 
that he would hold on for five days ; that he could 
not be responsible after that. His position and con- 
dition were better understood at the American head- 
quarters than at his own, and no effort was left 
untried to force the fighting and to terminate the 



178 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



campaign before Clinton could possibly get up. 
Arnold was with Gates, with the rank of brigadier 
general, but had come into collision with his com- 
manding officer, who had deprived him of his com- 
mand, and in effect had ordered him to the rear by- 
directing him to report to headquarters. To be sent 
to the rear in the presence of the enemy is an un- 
pardonable affront, an outrage, or an extreme duty, 
as the case may be, but it is the decision of the com- 
manding officer that that particular soldier is unfit 
for duty in that battle. 

Arnold's fiery, insubordinate temper could never 
brook such an insult, and on his troops becoming 
engaged, he dashed off, without rank, command, or 
orders, and led them. On the field his personality 
was so great that his directions were obeyed as or- 
ders, and the best fighting against Burgoyne was 
done by Arnold. At last the British general was 
forced to capitulate, and on the 17th of October, 
1777, surrendered five thousand seven hundred and 
fifty-two men to Gates, who had, regulars and mili- 
tia, ten thousand five hundred and fifty-four men on 
duty. Gates was so much elated by his success that 
his head — a weak, light member — was turned. He 
had been assigned to his command by Congress, 
therefore he argued that he held an independent 
command, ignoring the fact that Congress had ap- 
pointed a commander in chief of all the armies raised 
and to be raised for the defense of American liberty. 
He reported the result to the President of Congress, 
and Washington was left for weeks with no official 
information from Gates of the capitulation and of 
its substantial results. 

Gates had captured seven thousand stand of small 



THE TIMES THAT TRIED MEN'S SOULS. 



179 



arms, with great quantities of artillerj'', ammunition, 
clothes, tents, and supplies, which would have been 
of immense importance to the army before Philadel- 
phia. Washington went straight on in the execution 
of his grand strategy. He occupied the interior 
lines, and, by concentrating against isolated attacks 
of the enemy, could, to an extent, equalize the enor- 
mous disparity of force. He had fortified the Dela- 
ware ; and, could it be held, Sir William Howe, sur- 
rounded in Philadelphia by the rising of Maryland, 
Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, could be destroyed as 
Burgoyne had been. 

The surrender of the British general at Saratoga 
had released the Continentals in the army of the 
North. With them to re-enforce him, he could hold 
the Delaware, and the militia of the three States 
could close the gap behind Howe to the Chesapeake. 
He sent a peremptory order to Gates to dispatch all 
his Continentals to him. Gates did not do it. He 
sent another order, and then dispatched Colonel 
Alexander Hamilton, his aid-de-camp, to see that his 
commands were promptly obeyed. Hamilton started, 
expecting to meet the troops efi route; but, riding 
across the country, it was not until he reached Peeks- 
kill, on the Hudson, that he met Morgan laboring on 
the way to Philadelphia. 

Finding Putnam on the east side of the Hudson, 
he dispatched two Continental brigades from his 
command to headquarters, and on reaching Gates 
prevailed on him to send on two other brigades. 
These re-enforcements reached the Delaware ten 
days too late — after Howe had captured the forts, 
opened the Delaware, and made secure his communi- 
cations with the open sea and his base of supplies 
13 



l8o GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

in New York. The probability of repeating in Penn- 
sylvania the achievement of Saratoga was gone, 
and the only thing left to do was to protract the 
war, wear out his antagonist, and wait for re-enforce- 
ments, which, in the opinion of the American com- 
mander in chief, were sure to come. His anticipa- 
tions of the rising of the country were not met. 
The militia of Maryland came in from the mountains 
to the sea. The counties on the Delaware — now the 
State of Delaware — responded with that chivalry, 
spirit, and generosity for which those people have 
always been distinguished. 

New Jersey was divided in sentiment, torn by in- 
ternal broils, harried by continual raids by Hessian, 
Tory, and regular, and could not rise; she was tied. 
But Pennsylvania, the invaded State, stood as placid 
as her own fat oxen. On the 17th of October Wash- 
ington wrote to Wharton, the President of Pennsyl- 
vania, appealing to him to keep up the quota of 
troops demanded of the State by Congress. " I assure 
you, sir," he writes, " it is a matter of astonishment 
on every part of the Continent to hear that Pennsyl- 
vania, the most populous and opulent of all the 
States, has but twelve hundred militia in the field, at 
a time when the enemy are endeavoring to make 
themselves completely masters of, and to fix their 
quarters in, her capital." 

Yet, a month afterward, when the American army, 
"starved, naked, without shoes, clothes, or pro- 
visions, three days successively without bread, two 
days without meat," writes Varnum, of Rhode Island, 
the Legislature of Pennsylvania addressed a remon- 
strance to Congress against Washington's going into 
winter quarters instead of keeping the open field. 



THE TIMES THAT TRIED MEN'S SOULS. i8l 

This drop overflowed the full cup of his patience, 
and he broke out in a letter to Congress which did 
full justice to the subject, to himself, and to them. 
He told them : '' With truth I can declare that no man, 
in my opinion, ever had his measures more impeded 
than I have by every department of the army. 
Since the month of July we have had no assistance 
from the quartermaster general, and to want of 
assistance from this department the commissary 
charges a great part of his deficiency. 

**To this I may add, that notwithstanding it is a 
standing order, and often repeated, that the troops 
shall always have two days' provisions by them, 
that they might be ready on any sudden call, yet 
an opportunity has scarcely ever offered of taking 
advantage of the enemy that it has not been either 
totally obstructed or greatly impeded on this ac- 
count. ... By a field return this day made, besides 
the men in hospital and farmers* houses for want of 
shoes, we have two thousand eight hundred and 
ninety-eight men now in camp, unfit for duty because 
they are barefoot and otherwise naked. . . . 

"By the same return it appears that our whole 
strength in Continental troops, including the Eastern 
brigades, which have joined us since the surrender 
of General Burgoyne, exclusive of the Maryland 
troops sent to Wilmington, amounts to no more than 
eight thousand two hundred in camp fit for duty. . . . 
I can assure gentlemen, that it is a much easier and 
less distressing thing to draw remonstrances in a 
comfortable room by a good fireside than to occupy 
a cold, bleak hill, and sleep under frost and snow 
without clothes or blankets. However, although 
they seem to have little feeling for the naked and 



1 82 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

distressed soldiers, I feel abundantly for them, and 
from my soul I pity those miseries which it is neither 
in my power to relieve nor prevent." 

To keep the field was impossible. The com- 
manding general might have kept the field, but 
he could not keep the army. It would have died 
out, starved out, frozen out, straggled out. In 
thirty days he would not have had enough men 
for camp guard; so, in the face of the remon- 
strances of the Congress and of the Pennsylvania 
Legislature, he went into winter quarters at Valley 
Forge, twenty miles from Philadelphia, on the west 
side of the Schuylkill, on the 17th of December 1777. 
The Congress had become ambulatory, and was 
steadily deteriorating in material. The best men 
were in the army or in the State governments. John- 
son had been made Governor of Maryland, and was 
organizing that new State and utilizing her resources 
to support Washington, for he thoroughly under- 
stood that Washington was the Revolution. Patrick 
Henry was Governor of Virginia, and had declined 
to accept the position of deputy to Congress, as 
George Mason also had done from the beginning. 
George Clinton was Governor of New York, and 
Schuyler was with the army. 

The feeble, incapable body known as the Con- 
gress was no longer the body that at risk of life and 
fortune had shown the way to liberty by the Declara- 
tion of Independence, but was composed of obscure 
men, without force of character or consideration in 
the communities they represented. This was par- 
ticularly so among the deputies from New England. 
The Adamses were there, firm, faithful, brave, and 
true ; they never faltered or hesitated ; but the great 



THE TIMES THAT TRIED MEN'S SOULS. 183 

mass were attorneys or preachers or traders, without 
high ideas of duty, with no idea of devotion or self- 
sacrifice. John Jay, long after the Revolution, said 
to his son : '* No one but John Adams and I know the 
history of the Continental Congress. It will never 
be written." Its corruptions, its intrigues, its un- 
scrupulous undermining of Washington and the com- 
mon cause will never be revealed. The sectional 
line had appeared at an early day. 

The Adamses had endeavored to obliterate it by 
cordial support of Virginian influence in the selec- 
tion of a Virginia colonel for commander in chief. 
He was nominated by Johnson, of Maryland, but 
Adams brought New England to his formal support. 
This left a feeling of soreness in New England. 
Artemas Ward^ their own commander in chief of 
their own army, which they had raised, was super- 
seded by a Virginian aristocrat, with his liveries, 
his coat of arms, his coach and four, and his out- 
riders. He was an abomination to the nostrils of 
the faithful. John Hancock, President of the Con- 
gress, was affronted that he had not been selected 
to command the army. So the feeling grew. Small 
men, without pedigree, manners, or fortune, hate 
those who are their antipodes in character, conduct, 
and general estimation. The dignified deportment of 
the Virginian gentleman was exaggerated into pon- 
derous pomposity, and his style of dress and of liv- 
ing resented as an assumption of superiority. 

Whenever the troops were in cantonments, or 
camps, the commander in chief expected all general 
and field officers to dme with him every day at three 
o'clock. The etiquette at dinner was, that every 
officer should appear dressed as a gentleman should 



84 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



be; and the meal, whether of the scantiest or most 
abundant, was served by the general's own cooks 
and trained servants he had brought from Virginia. 
They were not unaccompanied with a glass of good 
rum or sound Madeira from the cellar of Mount 
Vernon. This simple social rite served a great and 
useful purpose. It brought all the officers under the 
constant supervision, inspection, and examination of 
their chief, who thus became acquainted with the 
character, ability, and capacity of each man ; while 
it brought them all into that close contact which so 
largely creates the comradeship of arms, and makes 
soldiers the more serviceable, as they have confi- 
dence in each other. This form of entertainment 
had been commenced by the commander in chief as 
soon as he assumed command at Cambridge, and 
was continued by him during the entire war. This 
formal state was offensive to the democratic mind, 
and was the source of criticism, carping, and ill-will 
in Congress. How much and how far British gold 
was used in that body to foment discontent and to 
create dissension and purchase treason, we do not as 
yet know. It is certain that John Jay and others 
believed that such influences were at work. 

We now know that Charles Lee had made his 
terms, and was exchanged and sent back to the 
army to carry out the scheme agreed on at the 
British headquarters in New York. At the same 
time appeared in London a number of letters of 
Washington to his brother Lund Washington and to 
Lieutenant Battaille Muse, his manager at Mount 
Vernon, depreciating the movement for independ- 
ence, and the motives of the movers for it and the 
characters of the leaders. These letters contained 



THE TIMES THAT TRIED MEN'S SOULS. 



85 



many domestic allusions and family details, which 
seemed to establish their genuineness. If true, they 
showed that the writer was a traitor to his cause, a 
hypocrite to his friends, and a maligner of his com- 
rades. They were, in fact, forged by Sir John Ran- 
dolph, Royal Attorney-General of Virginia, who had 
taken the Tory side, gone to London, and made this 
contribution toward the destruction of kin and coun- 
try, though he never struck a blow in the field in 
defense of his opinions. 

These letters were republished in New York and 
distributed through the country by the hands of 
envy and the breath of slander. Everywhere the air 
was full of suspicions of "our modern Fabius," as 
the New England members derisively dubbed the 
Virginian colonel. Even brusque, prompt, positive 
John Adams wrote his wife, that he was thankful 
that the capture of Burgoyne had been made by the 
Northern army. " If it had been accomplished by the 
Southern army," said the New Englander, " its com- 
mander would have been deified. It is bad enough as 
it is." A deep-laid plan then began to be put in exe- 
cution, not alone to displace Washington — though 
that would have been fatal to the cause, for it would 
not have brought such prompt returns to the opera- 
tors. It was intended, in Congress, to force Washing- 
ton out ; Lee to take command, as next in rank, and 
then the latter was to carry out his agreement with 
Sir Henry Clinton of restoring the Union and peace 
to a distracted people. The first step was to paralyze 
the commander in chief. That was done by reor- 
ganizing the Board of War, vested with general di- 
rection of operations, on which was placed Thomas 
Mifflin, the discredited quartermaster general, whom 



l86 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

Washington had just reported to Congress for incom- 
petency, Joseph Trumbull, ex-Commissary-General 
Richard Peters, Colonel Timothy Pickering, and 
General Horatio Gates. This board organized by 
making Gates president, and Wilkinson, his chief of 
staff, secretary. It was thus organized to convict. 
Its plan was to snub Washington, to ignore his rank, 
to send orders over his head, and to make it impossi- 
ble for him to command the army. 

When he resigned. Gates assumed that he would 
succeed to the vacant scepter. We can not believe 
that Gates was a party to the Lee plot, and there is 
no evidence now known pointing that way; but it is 
more probable that Gates was the cat's-paw of the 
conspirators. If Washington were out of the way, 
the command, by operation of law, devolved upon 
Lee; and it would require an entire reorganization 
of the army to put Gates at the head of it, and that 
would be impossible. 

Gates had been a sergeant in the British army, 
and the victory of Arnold and Morgan at Saratoga, 
for which he had received the plaudits of the public, 
had so addled him, that he failed to see the game 
that was being played inside of the one in which he 
had taken a part. He was playing to make Gates 
commander in chief. The real managers of the 
movement intended Lee to take charge — play the 
Monk act over again — and they would all gain rank, 
honors, and much wealth. Of course the first step 
was to blind Gates by flattery; and he was plied 
with that day after day. The conspiracy exploded 
in the most accidental manner, and hoisted its engi- 
neers as other petards have done, before and since. 

On Gates's staff, at Saratoga, was a young Mary- 



THE TIMES THAT TRIED MEN'S SOULS. 187 

lander as adjutant general — James Wilkinson by 
name — with the proverbial modesty, diffidence, and 
self-depreciation of the ichthyophagi — of those nur- 
tured on oysters and fish. Gates dispatched him 
with his report of Burgoyne's surrender to Congress, 
at York, in Pennsylvania. It took him eighteen days 
to make the ride ; he ought to have done it in five. 
But then a bright, handsome, well-dressed young 
staff officer, carrying the news of victory through the 
country, was a great man at every village and at 
every gentleman's country seat where he stopped to 
bait and rest. 

The girls of the house hung over him, and ran 
over each other in their eagerness to wait on this 
new Othello — how he marked with the bread the 
British fortifications, and with the salt the rifle-pits 
of the Americans ; what the general said to him, 
and what he said to the general ; and how by happy 
coincidence his suggestions — though he would not 
presume to insinuate that the general accepted and 
followed them, but the fact was, nevertheless, that 
when the line of action happened to correspond with 
the views he had confidentially imparted to the gen- 
eral, success invariably attended the operation. 

All this over and over, for days and nights, as 
the gay gallant galloped from country house to 
country house. As he approached the army he 
would from time to time light on some post of 
soldiers or quarters of officers. Passing through 
Reading, he spent the evening at the headquarters 
of Lord Stirling, and of course began sounding his 
trumpet. The staff sized him up in five minutes, 
filled his glass again and again, and kept it full and 
also kept him talking. They chaffed him about his 



l88 GENERAL WASHINGTON; 

great influence at headquarters with their tongues in 
their cheeks, and intimated that in the Southern 
army the adjutant general did not know and control 
everything. Knowledge and control were reserved 
to the general in chief alone. 

Wilkinson, eager to impress these incredulous 
aids-de-camp, told them that they had no idea of 
what was going on ; that the Board of War was 
about to supersede Washington with Gates, and that 
then they would have an opportunity to win some of 
the laurels of which he had secured such a plentiful 
crop. " In fact," said the garrulous and bibulous 
chief of staff, *' I have read a letter from General 
Conway, the brilliant and distinguished and experi- 
enced French officer, lately joined, to my own chief, 
General Gates, in which he says : * Heaven has de- 
termined to save your country, or a weak general 
and bad counsellors would have ruined it.' So you 
see," said Wilkinson, ''that your hero is only a clay 
hero at last; my hero is the only genuine one, who 
alone can save the country." 

Wilkinson proceeded to York, where he delivered 
his dispatches with a flourish and a bow, like a rus- 
tic beau, and waited until Congress should reward, 
with some signal recognition, his distinguished serv- 
ices in taking eighteen days to carry a message 
which any ordinary rider would have delivered in 
five. He demanded a major general's commission, a 
vote of thanks, a horse, and a sword — any one, either 
or all — until Dr. Witherspoon, of Princeton, said, 
*' I think ye'd better give the lad a pair of spurs." 
They did give him a brevet brigadiership, and he 
went off swelling and happy. Stirling's adjutant, 
McWilliams, of course immediately reported Wilkin- 



THE TIMES THAT TRIED MEN'S SOULS. 189 

son's statement to his chief, who informed General 
Washington of it. 

He had been well informed of the intrigues of 
Congress. He knew the efforts that were being made 
to undermine him in public opinion. Anonymous 
letters had been sent to Patrick Henry, Governor of 
Virginia, to Laurens, President of Congress, and 
to General Putnam, on the Hudson, carefully depre- 
ciating Washington's abilities and services, and urg- 
ing the necessity for an immediate change in the 
command of the army. Henry and Laurens sent 
their letters to Washington, who identified them as 
in the handwriting of Dr. Benjamin Rush, of Phila- 
delphia. That to Putnam, still preserved among his 
papers, has since been identified as in the handwrit- 
ing of James Lovell, deputy in Congress from Massa- 
chusetts. Such a swarm of buzzing insects, hiving 
in darkness, only required the light to be let in on it 
to disperse it, and Washington did this in the sim- 
plest, most direct way. On November 9, i777, he 
wrote Conway this note : 

"Sir: A letter which I received last night con- 
tained the following paragraph: 'In a letter from 
General Conway to General Gates, he says : " Heav- 
en has determined to save your country, or a weak 
general and bad counsellors would have ruined it." ' 

" I am, sir, your obedient servant, 

"George Washington." 

Conway was overwhelmed. He was inspector gen- 
eral, with the rank of major general. He promptly 
resigned, but the Board of War very properly would 
not accept his resignation. 



igO GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

Mifflin and Gates were as confounded as Conway, 
but they all agreed to stand together as far as possi- 
ble. The first thing to be done was to find out how 
much Washington knew. Hamilton had been some 
time at Gates's headquarters, and mean-minded men 
suspect mean tricks, so the idea floated through 
what Gates took for his mind, that Hamilton had 
stolen his correspondence — in the name of Heaven, 
how much and what part ! Gates therefore wrote to 
Washington, complainnig of this theft from his let- 
ter book, and beseeching that the general would aid 
him in discovering the thief. Washington wrote him, 
explaining how the information had come to him 
through the babbling of Wilkinson, thus upsetting 
the theory of theft, but relieving the cabal with the 
knowledge that no written evidence of the state- 
ment was in the possession of the general. Gates 
therefore denied that there was any such expression 
in Conway's letter to him, and at the same time re- 
turned the letter to Conway, so that he (Gates) could 
not be called upon to produce it. Conway denied 
that any such expression was in the letter, and re- 
frained from exhibiting it. Washington coldly per- 
sisted in holding them both to the point, that the 
simplest, plainest, most perfect settlement of the ex- 
istence or nonexistence of the obnoxious paragraph 
was the production. of the paper itself, and without 
it the question would be left absolutely uncertain. 

Stirling wrote Wilkinson that he had heard that 
the latter now asserted that there were no such 
words in the letter, and asked Wilkinson also for a 
copy of the letter. Wilkinson indignantly refused, 
repudiating the idea of such a betrayal of confidence 
as showing a private letter. But Wilkinson's time 



THE TIMES THAT TRIED MEN'S SOULS. 191 

was not a happy one — Stirling prodding him for a 
copy, Gates denouncing him for treachery, Conway 
damning him for a fool. He undertook, as many a 
man has, to brazen through it. He rode over to 
York, sent his friend Colonel Ball, of Virginia, to 
Gates with a letter demanding satisfaction. The 
terms of the duel were arranged, when Gates came 
around at night to Wilkinson's quarters, made up, 
and they became friends. He went after Stirling, but 
Stirling was too ready with his right hand, and 
Wilkinson accepted in satisfaction a statement from 
Stirling that Wilkinson had said what he did about 
the letter in a convivial moment, but not in confi- 
dence. Wilkinson resigned his commission as in- 
spector general and major general, retaining that of 
colonel, and retired to obscurity. After the war he 
was restored to the army, was in command at New 
Orleans on the cession of Louisiana to the United 
States, and was charged with complicity with Colonel 
Aaron Burr in his treasonable schemes. 

Conway resigned, fought a duel with General 
John Cadwalader about this business, who shot him 
through the body, thought he was going to die, and 
wrote a contrite letter to General Washington, ex- 
pressing the highest respect and admiration, and the 
deepest love for him. Gates was sent after a time 
to command the Southern army, and there his 
*' Northern laurels turned to Southern willows," as 
Charles Lee warned him they might. After defeat 
and disaster he was relieved, and retired to an ob- 
scure plantation in Virginia, where he died unnoticed 
and unknown. Every conspicuous, exposed member 
of the cabal came to an ignominious end. Not one 
survived Washington's letter to Conway. The 



[92 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



parties to it in and out of Congress have escaped, 
sheltered by their obscurity, but not a single mem- 
ber of that Congress ever won public confidence or 
achieved reputation, unless he had been at that time 
an avowed supporter of Washington. The exposure 
of this intrigue paralyzed the conspirators. The 
dictator ruled the Board of War, instead of the Board 
of War managing him. He made Nathanael Greene, 
of Rhode Island, quartermaster general, and Jeremiah 
Wadsworth, of Connecticut, commissary general ; 
and very soon military matters began to improve. 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE FRENCH ALLIANCE. 

From the day of the Declaration of Independ- 
ence Washington perfectly appreciated the situation, 
that independence could not be achieved by the 
colonies alone. With the command of the water, 
the British would occupy all the ports and control 
all foreign commerce and intercourse with the world. 
The colonists could retire to the mountains, and 
could not be subjugated, but they never could be 
an independent people as long as they were cut off 
from the world and blockaded from the ocean. 
When he presided at the Fairfax meeting, and voted 
to memorialize the King — that from the King in 
council there was but one appeal — he understood 
that to mean an appeal to the God of battles, and 
that appeal the Virginians were ready and willing to 
make, unaided by any other arm and unsupported 
from any quarter. They had done so under the lead 
of Nathaniel Bacon against Sir William Berkley — 
unsuccessfully, indeed, so far as the overthrow of his 
government was concerned, but with entire success 
so far as demanded reforms were obtained. Resist- 
ance to the King might be made unaided ; independ- 
ence of the kingdom could only be fully attained by 
foreign assistance. 

Washington was brought to favor independence 



94 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



as a war necessity to carry on successful war; he 
was forced to favor the French alliance as the only 
means of securing independence. But independence 
and the French alliance were both entirely distaste-- 
ful steps to many earnest and determined patriots. 
To resist the Government with arijis was an inherited 
right ; to dissolve the Union was an offense against 
the law of Nature; to fight our kin, our own blood 
and our brothers, was the natural order; but to join 
the *' bloody Frenchman" in fighting them was en- 
tirely inconceivable. The great struggle their an- 
cestors had made was to expel New France from, 
and establish New England on, the American conti- 
nent ; and it was contrary to the traditions, the senti- 
ments, and the convictions of the English in Amer- 
ica to aid in re-establishing the French in the position 
from which they had dislodged and expelled them 
twenty years before. 

These objections weighed heavily on the mind 
and heart of Washington. He had spent a score of 
the years of his life in fighting the French ; he was 
not willing to purchase independence from his blood 
and kin at home for the purpose of restoring their 
hereditary and natural enemy to the position in Amer- 
ica from which they had been expelled. But Wash- 
ington's mind worked with mathematical and inexo- 
rable logic. If we were subjugated, we would lose 
every right that freemen cherish and every muni- 
ment of liberty on which they rely, and with which 
alone it can be perpetuated. We would become 
serfs of an insolent, brutal, overbearing set of mas- 
ters, who, arrogating to themselves Norman blood, 
would introduce Norman customs of confiscation, 
conviction, and forfeitures into America. We could 



THE FRENCH ALLIANCE. 



195 



achieve independence and escape subjugation solely 
by means of a French alliance. The alliance might 
restore Canada to France, but it were better to 
achieve independence first, and then control as best 
we could the consequences of the alliance. 

Therefore, when the news came that the treaty, 
offensive and defensive, had been signed on the 6th 
of February, 1778, at Paris, between His Most Chris- 
tian Majesty and the United States of America, it 
was considered the beginning of the end. It was 
certain that Spain must soon join France in this 
attack on their hereditary enemy. Great Britain 
promptly declared war on France, on March 13, 1778. 
Lord George Germaine shifted the responsibility 
for the disasters of the American campaign from his 
own shoulders to that of the generals in the field. 
Burgoyne, who had gone home on parole at once, 
took his seat in the House of Commons and de- 
fended himself with vigor. 

As soon as Sir William Howe heard of it he in- 
sisted upon his right to face his accusers and meet 
the charges against his conduct in person. He re- 
signed, turned over the command to Sir Henry Clin- 
ton, and sailed for home. The war with France had 
put a new complexion on the occupation of Philadel- 
phia. Instead of perfectly secure communications 
by sea, with his base at New York and England, the 
approach of a great French fleet rendered them 
exceedingly hazardous. Consequently, on June 18, 
1778, the British army marched out of Philadelphia, 
with a trail of wagons and Tory refugees twelve 
miles long. Before sundown the American advance 
took possession of the city. 

The American army was now about numerically 
14 



196 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

equal to the British. It was better than it evgr had 
been in drill, equipment, and morale. During the 
winter it had been under the instruction of Von 
Steuben, inspector general, and the troops were 
anxious to put in practice some of the movements 
of the great Frederick — which their drill master, the 
Baron, had told them a thousand times were the 
means by which he achieved victory. Sir Henry 
Clinton was pushing for deep water and an open 
port. He apprehended being cooped up in Phila- 
delphia, the Delaware blockaded, and the militia of 
Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New Jersey rising like 
a storm in his rear, both flanks and front, as the 
Green Mountain Boys and the Massachusetts and 
Connecticut militia had swept around Burgoyne. 

Washington intended and hoped to accomplish 
this, but the treason of Lee and the vanity of Gates 
lost the chance. As soon, however, as Sir Henry set 
his face toward the sea the American commander's 
drums beat the assembly, and he pushed out to cut 
him off. The news of the evacuation reached the 
American headquarters at ten a. m. By two p. m, six 
brigades were on the march pushing out into Jersey, 
followed by the whole army next morning at day- 
light. This prompt action was extraordinary. The 
troops had been in huts for exactly six months. In 
that time an army accumulates an incredible amount 
of trash — clocks, feather beds, large iron ovens, 
bedsteads, boxes, trunks, etc. It is impossible to 
shake them off in a few hours. Soldiers will load 
themselves with every conceivable inconvenience 
rather than throw it away. When the army of 
northern Virginia evacuated Manassas, in March, 
1862, its wagons were broken down with Saratoga 



THE FRENCH ALLIANCE. j^^ 

trunks — unwieldy, cumbrous affairs, the contribu- 
tion of devoted sisters and mothers— and it took 
three days' stalling of wagons and breaking down of 
four and six mule teams to clear out the "things" 
piled in and on them. 

When the Germans, in 187 1, invested Paris, the 
Teutonic mind seemed to run by a law of Nature to 
horology, and the files of the marching columns 
were picturesque and ridiculous with every variety 
of clock— big clocks, little clocks, square clocks, 
round clocks, long clocks, short clocks— on their 
backs, in their arms, stuffed in their haversacks, and 
protruding from their knapsacks; and after a day 
or two the route was strewn with every variety of 
product of French skill and of German vexation. 
Caesar called this ''impedimenta." 

That Washington should have got in motion in 
four hours after receiving notice proves, first, that 
he had been preparing for the move ; second, that 
his troops, officers and men, were well in hand; 
and third, that the general in chief had a prompt, 
quick, positive mind. He knew that Sir Henry must 
evacuate; that he must move by land to New York ; 
that his column must be long and attenuated, choked 
with the debris of winter quarters, and stretched out 
with the plunder of officers and the impedimenta of 
refugees. With such an army guarding such a train, 
there must occur opportunity to strike some point 
weaker than the other, and to cut it off. If the am- 
putated portion should be the artillery and the re- 
serve ammunition, so much the better; but the op- 
portunity 7nust occur; it was a certainty that it 
would occur. It was his duty to be prepared to take 
advantage of it ; for the great difference between sol- 



Io8 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

diers is, that one knows an opportunity when he sees 
it, and embraces it on sight, while the other never 
understands that an opportunity has been within his 
reach until after it has passed irreclaimably beyond. 

The American appreciated the conditions, and 
knew what would happen. He had his troops 
stripped ready for the race, and the moment Sir 
Henry started he gave the word, and six brigades 
moved out promptly and took the route, Charles Lee 
in command. He crossed the Delaware at Coryell's 
Ferry, now Lambertville, N. J., on the 20th, the 
army following over the same crossing, and pressed 
on toward Princeton. Washington had the interior 
and shorter line to New York. By the 27th of June 
his advance interposed between the British and 
Amboy, and Sir Henry turned off to the right and 
marched for Sandy Hook. 

The most incomprehensible line of Washington's 
policy during the whole war was his constant appeal 
to councils of war. He had councils to determine 
whether he should attack General Gage at Boston or 
Sir William Howe at New York or in Philadelphia, or 
whether he should make the dash on Princeton ; and, 
what is still more impossible to understand, he al- 
ways permitted his council to decide. 

It may have been that, appreciating his own in- 
experience, he really desired advice; or it may have 
been that, having made up his mind, he took this 
means of impressing his views on his subordinates; 
or he may have taken this means to bring his officers 
in close and confidential relations to each other, just 
as he always expected all his general officers to dine 
with him every day. Whatever may have been the 
reason for the councils of war, they are not discern- 



THE FRENCH ALLIANCE. 



199 



ible now. But this council decided to attack. The 
commander in chief had intended and had been pre- 
paring for this move for the preceding four weeks. 
Lee, therefore, was directed to push on with his five 
thousand men and cut off the British rear guard at 
Monmouth Court-House, and hold it while Washing- 
ton brought up the main body of the army. 

The movement was too assured of success to suit 
Lee's plans. It would certainly be accomplished 
if pressed, and, if accomplished, disastrous conse- 
quences to Sir Henry Clinton might ensue. He might 
be surrounded and captured, as Burgoyne had been, 
and then "good-by" to Lee's dukedom and pension. 
He therefore asked to be relieved from the command 
of the advance, on the ground of his disapproval of 
the military movement. Lafayette was thus left in 
charge, and his fidelity, energy, and courage insured 
a vigorous execution of the plan of the commander 
in chief. During the night Lee concluded that there 
was too much chance of success with Lafayette, and 
that he alone could insure disaster. 

With a rout of the army and a probable capture 
of its commander, the Board of War would be re- 
vived, the command would devolve on him, and, in 
conjunction with the mercenary traitors in Congress, 
the debris of resistance could be surrendered, the 
terms of the British commissioners accepted, the 
Union restored, and he secure his dukedom, with 
vast possessions from the confiscated estates of the 
rebels. Of his own personal knowledge he knew 
what a princely estate Mount Vernon was, for he 
had been entertained there; and it would furnish a 
delightful haven for an old soldier battered by many 
wars and buffeted by various fortunes. 

*"vlviV iS III t^r0t.\^t ooan-ct'l ^^% ©(>f«»«4 <o *»» aifaclc , 



200 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

Lafayette was pressing on to make the move- 
ment which would bring on a general engagement. 
Lee thereupon represented to the general that a 
movement of such moment and responsibility ought 
to be intrusted to the second in command, and that 
it was his duty to execute it. Washington agreed 
with him ; said that that had been his intention, and 
that Lee himself had frustrated it by declining the 
command, and that now no change could be made 
which would appear to reflect on Lafayette by send- 
ing a senior officer to rank him and take his com- 
mand away from him in the presence of the enemy. 
But Washington, with a consideration for Lee's feel- 
ings which does no credit to his judgment of men, at 
length sent Lee forward with Scott's and Varnum's 
brigades to re-enforce Lafayette. Upon reporting his 
arrival to the latter, his rank gave him command of 
the whole, and the opportunity to produce disaster, 
which he sought. He was within five miles of the 
British left wing, which was separated from its right, 
convoying the trains, by an interval of several miles. 

The next day (June 28th) was one of the hottest 
of the season. Lee did not get into action until 
after eight o'clock — he ought to have struck his 
blow at daylight — and as soon as he appeared, 
Cornwallis, who commanded the British left, turned 
sharply on him and pressed him with vigor. Wash- 
ington, with his main body, was three miles back, 
comfortably enjoying the sound of the firing which 
assured him of substantial results. All at once a 
countryman rode up with an exclamation that the 
Americans were retreating. The general, with em- 
phasis, said that the man was a fool ; but before half 
a dozen phrases could have been uttered the road. 



THE FRENCH ALLIANCE. 20I 

the woods, the fields, the air became full of indica- 
tions of rout and panic. A drummer boy ran up 
with his tongue hanging out, who was promptly cuffed 
into decency and quiet. Soldiers could be seen 
dodging about in the woods, flanking the group in 
the road, which they understood at once consisted 
of generals, who were not good company at that time 
for a skulking private. 

The general up to that time had been standing in 
the road with his arm on his horse's neck, taking 
in everything that transpired, cool and quiet, only 
opening his mouth to damn the countryman and to 
scold the drummer boy, when at once he mounted 
and struck off in a gallop to the front, with the staff 
straggling on as best they could behind him. Some 
distance toward the fighting he met Grayson's and 
Patton's regiments running as fast as fatigue, the 
hot weather, and the crowd would let them. The 
Virginians on the run ! No living man had ever 
seen that sight before, and the general demanded of 
them whether the whole advance corps was retreat- 
ing. They said it was. Soon Shreeve, at the head 
of his regiment, came along in good order. "What's 
the reason of all this ? " "I do not know," said 
Colonel Shreeve ; " I retreated by order." He di- 
rected Shreeve to halt, form a line, and rally what 
he could on it. Meeting Colonel Nathaniel Ramsay, 
of the Maryland Line, struggling and straggling 
back, he said, " Colonel Ramsay, if you can stop 
this advance for fifteen minutes you will save this 
army." " I will do it," said Ramsay, " or die ; " and 
he did it, and did not die either. Every officer who 
came by was dissatisfied with the retreat. No one 
could explain it. They were driving the enemy 



202 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



when they were called off. That was the universal 
feeling. General Lafayette sent word that the pres- 
ence of the commander in chief was imperatively 
needed on the field. 

This message overflowed the cup of patience and 
broke the back of self-control. Just then Lee came 
along with his staff, cool and complacent. Washing- 
ton rode at him as if he meant to ride him down. 
He was like a raging lion. " What is the meaning 
of all this ? " he fiercely demanded of Lee. His man- 
ner was more nerve-shattering than his words, his 
voice than his actions, and Lee was utterly abashed. 
He stammered that misconception of orders made 
confusion, and confusion necessitated withdrawal, 
'^ for our troops can't face the British infantry ; they 
are the best troops in the world." ''Will you com- 
mand here, sir, and hold this hill while I bring up 
the rest ?" " It is perfectly indifferent to me where 
and what I command," said Lee. " I expect you 
to take proper means for checking the enemy ! " 
"Your orders shall be obeyed, and I shall not be the 
first to leave the ground." 

Washington galloped back and formed his line, 
with Lord Stirling on his left and Greene on his 
right. Cornwallis first attempted to turn the left 
flank, but was driven back by Stirling, and then 
tried the right with equal bad fortune, for he was 
checked by Greene. The British then fell back 
beyond Monmouth Court-House, and took a strong 
position with flanks well covered by woods and mo- 
rass. The American general pressed his troops on 
to attack, but before the proper disposition could be 
made night fell, and the movement was abandoned 
on account of the darkness. During the night 



THE FRENCH ALLIANCE. 203 

Washington and Lafayette occupied the same cloak 
on the ground, and passed the entire time discussing 
Lee. What passed has not been recorded, but La- 
fayette had seen the thing with his own eyes. It 
certainly was not cowardice, for Lee was beyond 
peradventure a brave man. But he had refused to 
fight, had declined to inflict a mortal blow on his 
enemy, and had thrown away victory when it was 
within his grasp. His mysterious capture outside 
of his lines, the talk about trying him by British 
court-martial as a deserter, his effort to have a com- 
mittee of Congress visit him in his quarters while 
a prisoner of war, that he might make an important 
communication to them — all this, it may well be sup- 
posed, was brought up for review and criticism. 

There is no evidence that either Washington or 
Lafayette had the faintest idea of the length and 
breadth and height and depth of Lee's turpitude. 
They could not conceive that he was at that very 
moment in the pay of the British commander in 
chief, and that the British commander was acting on 
Lee's well-matured plan to destroy his commander, 
his comrades, his country, his friends. 

The army was halted the next day, and soon after 
was moved to a salubrious camping ground at New 
Brunswick for rest and refreshment. Sir Henry, on 
the 30th of June, crossed over to Sandy Hook, and 
thus again New Jersey was clear, and the enemy, after 
three years' campaign, only held what his picket 
lines covered. Lee wrote to his chief, demanding 
an apology for his language and manner in the 
battle. He was at once ordered under arrest, and 
charges preferred, first, for disobedience of orders ; 
second, misbehavior in the presence of the enemy — 



204 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



i. e., cowardice; third, disrespect to his commanding 
officer. A court-martial, with Lord Stirling as presi- 
dent, four brigadiers and eight colonels, was con- 
vened on July 4th, at New Brunswick. The trial 
lasted until August 12th, and resulted in the convic- 
tion of Lee on all three charges. He was sentenced 
to be suspended from all command for one year, sub- 
ject to the approval of Congress. On December 5th 
the sentence was approved by that body — fifteen ayes 
and seven nays. If he was guilty as charged, he 
ought to have been shot, and his escape can only be 
attributed to the provincialism of the court that 
tried and sentenced him. 

The respect for the British character, the British 
morals, statesmen, and soldier, was still the dominat- 
ing and directing influence in the colonial breast; 
and the militia generals and colonels who sat on 
Lee's trial would not have dreamed of shooting a 
real lieutenant colonel of the British army — a genu- 
ine soldier, who had seen war against the Infidel and 
been decorated with crosses by live kings and em- 
perors. It required another generation and another 
war to eliminate that sentiment as one of the forces, 
and a strong force, of American society. But it has 
been eliminated, and the dregs of it, still exhibited 
on occasion, only prove the fad of weak-minded 
women and no-minded men. 

Lee retired to a small plantation in Jefferson 
County, Va., not far from Charlestown, long after- 
ward the scene of John Brown's execution. To- 
ward the end of his term of exclusion, hearing the 
Congress was going to drop him from the army, 
he wrote a very impertinent letter to the President 
of the Congress, which, without more ado, struck his 



THE FRENCH ALLIANCE. 



205 



name from the list of American soldiers. He fought 
with Colonel John Laurens, aid-de-camp of Wash- 
ington, on account of some reflections on Laurens's 
chief, and passed the rest of his life snarling and 
cynical, discreditable and discredited; and only the 
discovery of the Howe papers in this generation has 
resurrected the skeleton of the almost last survivor 
of the free lance and the soldier of fortune. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE FRENCH ALLIANCE AGAIN. 

When Washington took command of the New 
England army, in July, 1775, no man living under- 
stood the conditions, political and military, as well, 
and no man enlarged his view as environment devel- 
oped and changed the relations of people, of com- 
munities, and of States; and he rose higher and high- 
er to understand what surrounded him and what was 
necessary. The Fairfax resolutions accurately rep- 
resented his views: First, protest against illegal acts 
of government, because government had no right to 
levy taxes or take any portion of the property of 
any Englishman without his consent; this had been 
done by John Hampden. Protest proving unavailing, 
then to resist with arms every trespass on common 
right — the right of Englishmen to have, hold, and 
enjoy the products of their own labor, free from 
interference by any one, from King to constable, ex- 
cept under laws to which he had consented. 

Such armed resistance, which the common law 
called the right of self-defense, was the reform ele- 
ment of the British Constitution, and since the Nor- 
man Conquest had been the power by which the 
English had kept their rulers in check and preserved 
rights of person and of property to home and family. 
Self-defense against trespass on rights — the right to 



THE FRENCH ALLIANCE AGAIN. 



207 



use precisely that amount of force which was neces- 
sary to protect and preserve person and home — was 
the logical premise of armed resistance against void 
laws attempted to be enforced by officers of gov- 
ernment, whether civil or military. The colonists 
comprised about three million white people, mainly 
English, scattered along the Atlantic seaboard for 
two thousand miles, which was indented at every 
point with sounds, bays, and rivers, affording easy 
access to the interior. Great Britain had three hun- 
dred thousand troops in the field, seasoned by cam- 
paigns in every climate in every part of the world, 
and braced by victory over every foe they ever met. 
For a thousand years the Cross of St. George had 
been the signal for victory and the emblem of glory, 
and for nearly a hundred and fifty years it had swept 
the oceans from continent to continent, the controller 
of commerce and the mistress of the sea. 

The strategy of the Revolution was the largest, 
wisest, best, that could have been adopted. It was 
evolved from the broad brain and great heart of 
Washington, and was the result of his capacity and 
experience. He understood continental conditions. 
He knew the value of the Western lands, and how 
the outlet to the highway of commerce, of civiliza- 
tions, of nations and races, was necessary to the fu- 
ture dwellers on the great rivers and lakes of the 
inland continental basin ; but he also understood 
that the continent itself was necessary to support the 
progress of the seaboard. The thirteen separate, dis- 
tinct corporations — colonies — were as entirely apart 
as if they were on different continents. Charleston 
was as far from Boston as from London, and the 
people of New England differed as widely from those 



2o8 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

on the Chesapeake as those on opposite sides of the 
British Channel. In race, in religion, in ideas of life, 
and ideals of right and duty, they differed widely — in 
many respects were antagonistic. 

The Marylanders despised the Connecticut *' Yan- 
kees " as bumpkins without manners; the Yankees 
derided the Marylanders as " Macaronis " without 
manliness. Virginia and Pennsylvania were on the 
point of war about the possession of the upper Ohio. 
New York and New Hampshire had a similar bitter 
quarrel about the Green Mountains. So, when Wash- 
ington assumed command of the Continental army, 
it was in substance a New England army, and the 
continental feeling was not yet born to brace it. 
During the whole time of the investment of Boston 
his great effort was to bring his people together so 
as to know each other, for he knew that association 
would produce sympathy and respect, and, when the 
Virginia troops under Morgan and the Maryland 
Riflemen under Cresap reported, he was enabled to 
carry out his policy of mixing them. While seeking 
to crystallize his command by association, and thus 
consolidate the colonies by the friendly relations of 
their representatives, his mind was occupied with the 
grand conceptions which embraced the continent and 
eventually directed the war. 

He sent Montgomery and Arnold to Canada to 
secure the support of that people, which would have 
been done but for the accident of the fall of Mont- 
gomery at Quebec, and the impenetrable stupidity 
and incorrigible bigotry of the Continental Congress, 
which alleged as one of the grievances the colonies 
had taken arms to redress, the act of Parliament 
securing liberty of conscience, freedom of worship. 



THE FRENCH ALLIANCE AGAIN. 



209 



and protection of property to Roman Catholics and 
to their Church in Canada. Such a statement of 
the principles and feelings of the colonies in arms 
against the Government effectually crushed out any 
sentiment of sympathy that may have existed among 
the French in Canada. The Congress attempted to 
repair its blunder by sending a commission with 
John Carroll, Provincial of the Society of Jesus in 
America, at its head, to explain away to the Cana- 
dians the protest and petition to the King. 

The Congress did not mean what they said, but 
only desired to enlist on their side the bigotry which 
lay dormant in every Englishman's heart. The 
Roman Catholics of Maryland would testify that 
among the Protestants in the English colonies there 
was the fullest religious liberty and toleration for 
Catholics. But the Canadians very reasonably re- 
fused their confidence to a policy which consisted 
of falsehood and deception. They could have no 
guarantee that they were not to be the victims of 
the fraud, and not the English people. The other 
move against Canada was more successful. The 
Quebec Act of 1763 had extended the boundaries of 
Canada to the Ohio River, thus asserting, ratifying, 
and executing the pretensions of the French as to 
that boundary. The great colonies on the ocean 
shore were thus cut off from the Mississippi Valley 
and the Great Lakes. 

Washington understood and appreciated the con- 
tinental conditions flowing from the control of the 
inland waters and lands — i.e., development and com- 
merce. When, therefore, a young Virginian frontiers- 
man, scout, hunter, surveyor, prospector — George 
Rogers Clark — came forward with a proposition for 



2IO GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

the conquest of the Western country, to Governor 
Patrick Henry, during the winter of lyyy-'yS, Wash- 
ington supported the movement with all his in- 
fluence; and early in 1778 all the country north- 
west of the Ohio was conquered by Clark and an- 
nexed to Virginia as the "County of Illinois." The 
strategy of the resistance was to create cohesion 
and fraternity among the people of the different 
colonies, to evade the British in the open field and 
on the high sea, to expand the power of the colonies 
by territorial extension, to confine the enemy to the 
ports, and protect the interior from them. Washing- 
ton believed in waging a waiting war, in exhausting 
his enemy — so far from his source of supplies — by 
delay, in the firm conviction that the finances must 
break down and war cease from very exhaustion. 
War of invasion requires greater efforts and greater 
sacrifices than war of defense. Invasion is volun- 
tary, and may cease at any moment the invader wills 
it. It therefore requires energy and determination, 
as well as enormous expenditure of material re- 
sources of men and money. 

But defense is a matter of pure necessity ; it is 
the protection of home and property, as well as of 
life and liberty. Invasion is at a distance from the 
base. Defense is on the base itself. Every pound 
of food and forage used by the British troops in 
Boston, New York, or Philadelphia was brought from 
England or Halifax, while the Continental army was 
fed by the neighborhood. It was impossible to drive 
the British out of the seaports without sea force. It 
was equally impossible for the British to penetrate 
the interior. Sir John Burgoyne and Sir William 
Howe had both tried it with disastrous conse- 



THE FRENCH ALLIANCE AGAIN. 2 II 

quences. The strategy of the war, therefore, was to 
be defense and delay, as long as the dominion of the 
sea was wielded by the British. 

But Washington argued that the maritime nations 
could not and would not let slip such an opportunity 
to emancipate commerce and to create a rival to 
the maritime control of Great Britain. Strategy, the 
direction and control of military force toward great 
objects, is the product of great genius, great will, 
great intelligence. The strategy of the Revolution, 
elaborated and created by Washington, was the result 
of all these, and therefore it was grand, wise, and 
all-embracing. Skillful tactics, the management of 
troops in actual contact with the enemy, is the re- 
sult of experience. This, of course, the Virginia 
colonel did not have, and therefore his tactics were 
defective, weak, and inefficient. 

The campaign of Schuyler and Gates against 
Burgoyne ; of Gates and Lafayette and Greene against 
Cornwallis; the defense of the line of the Hudson 
and the Delaware; the concentration by interior lines 
on Yorktown, were all parts of the same wise, strong 
strategy, and exhibit the highest qualities of general- 
ship. But the dispositions at Long Island and at 
Brandywine, at both of which places he was flanked, 
and the attempted movement of converging columns 
at Germantown and Trenton, both of which failed to 
be carried out as projected, all show the inexperienced 
soldier. He had seen Braddock's two thousand men in 
battle destroyed by bad handling, and had absolutely 
no experience in tactical movement of troops on the 
field of battle except that once, and his tactics were 
bad. Just as, in the beginning of the war between 
the States, in 1861 there was no soldier below Gen- 
15 



212 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

eral Scott who had ever commanded a regiment in 
battle, and none of them had ever seen a brigade 
movement under fire. At the first battle of Manas- 
sas, July 21, 1861, McDowell's plan of battle was 
faultless, if he had had veteran officers and troops 
to execute it. He moved round his adversary's 
flank, and there, marching down the right bank of 
Bull Run, extended and re-enforced his line as each 
ford or bridge was uncovered. His movement had 
been executed with the accuracy of a game of chess, 
until Johnston's unexpected attack on his flank gave 
him checkmate. Beauregard's reply move was to 
cross Bull Run and capture McDowell's reserve and 
supplies, and cut off his army ; and this failed from 
the inexperience of his ofiicers. 

Washington attempted Beauregard's move at 
Brandywine, and failed from precisely the same 
cause. His apparent recklessness in battle was 
prompted by the same reason. He knew what he 
wanted done. He could not get it done by orders 
or agents, so he undertook to do it himself. It was 
a matter of cold, calculating necessity. He was too 
large a man — had too firm a hold on a fiery, tem- 
pestuous nature — knew his own limitations too well 
to ever permit himself the enjoyment of letting him- 
self loose in battle. His business was to see, to 
think, and to direct. The mere fighting could well 
be left to people whose business it was to attend to 
that department. The exhilaration of combat is an 
excitement that a great man — leader of men — never 
permits himself. The stimulant rouses the heart to 
quicker pulsations, drives the blood with faster 
throbs, charges the batteries of the brain, until the 
great general in battle becomes one ganglion of 



THE FRENCH ALLIANCE AGAIN. 



213 



nerves, with twenty senses, each acting with elec- 
trical force and precision. 

He sees everything, hears everything, under- 
stands everything above sight, and hearing, and 
judgment. The present is photographed on his 
brain as the future is displayed to his heart, and 
he acts on inspiration, not logic. Washington did 
not have this genius. Battle roused him physically, 
but not so much intellectually, and when he could 
not get done what he sav/ was necessary and which 
he wanted done, he attempted to do it himself. 
Hence his attempt to rally the rout at Brandywine; 
hence his throwing himself before his retreating line 
at Germantown, until Sullivan led his horse out; 
hence his establishing himself within forty yards of 
the charging line of British bayonets at Princeton, 
until his leading regiments could be brought up to 
him and take the place from which Mercer's troops 
had just been driven. These incidents were not ex- 
hibitions of the gaiidiiim certaminis, or the fury of 
fighting, at all; they were the struggles of the inex- 
perienced soldier to repair disaster caused by his 
inexperienced officers and men. But he was master 
of the strategy of the struggle. That was to pro- 
tract resistance, keep an army in the field, pen up 
the enemy in the ports, until a foreign alliance gave 
him a chance on the sea. 

France was the historical, logical, necessary ally 
of rebellion in the British Empire. Every attack on 
the hereditary enemy within her own dominions, for 
ten generations, had come from France, and it was 
mathematically certain from the first that, as soon 
as France was convinced that rebellion promised 
revolution, she would aid it with all her force. The 



214 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



news of the treaty of alliance, then, which had been 
concluded February 6, 1778, was precisely what he 
expected; and when war was declared by Great 
Britain, Washington well knew that it must be fol- 
lowed by war with Spain. 

Sir Henry Clinton crossed over to Staten Island 
on June 30th, where he was securely bottled up by 
Washington, who promptly took position on the 
Hudson. On July 8th — a week afterward — the 
French fleet appeared off the Capes of the Dela- 
ware, under command of Lieutenant General the 
Count D'Estaing. After communicating with the 
shore it sailed for Sandy Hook. The British fleet in 
the harbor was far inferior to the French outside, 
and W^ashington sent his aids — Laurens and Hamil- 
ton — promptly to the French general admiral to 
propose a joint attack on New York. No men ac- 
cept kindly the command of men of different pro- 
fessions, and sailors no more like command of 
soldiers than soldiers would that of sailors; and 
the French admiral did not enjoy the command 
of the American general. The bar of New York 
was found to impose an insuperable obstacle to the 
great French line of battle ships; and Washington's 
dream of the two previous years — of the capture of 
a British army by aid of a co-operating naval force 
— was abandoned at that point. 

Another place, however, offered opportunity. 
After the expulsion of the British from Boston, New 
England had been free from the enemy, except that 
Lord Percy had made a lodgment at Newport, in 
Rhode Island, where the British commanders had 
ever since maintained a considerable force. Instead 
of concentrating and forcing the Ime of the Hudson, 



THE FRENCH ALLIANCE AGAIN. 



215 



and thus isolating New England, British strategy 
consisted of threats, occupation of seaports, raids 
on exposed rural districts, and harrying defenseless 
towns and villages. War on women and children 
sometimes, though rarely, unnerves the arms of men 
in the field ; it more generally braces them. But for 
two years this outlying post of New York was kept 
up. Sir Henry Clinton used it to worry Washington 
and to make him loose his grip on the Hudson to 
defend Connecticut. After Lord Percy's departure 
for home, the command devolved eventually on Sir 
Robert Piggott, an accomplished soldier and a gen- 
tleman, under whom the garrison was increased to 
six thousand men. 

Newport and New York were the only places in 
the United States pressed by British feet, and, as 
the latter could not be attacked by the allies, the 
former was considered the next point to move on. 
John Sullivan, of New Hampshire, had been in com- 
mand at Providence since the spring, and Washing- 
ton now sent him fifteen hundred picked men, under 
Greene, a native of the country, and whose Rhode 
Island brigade had been the smartest, best equipped, 
best drilled, and best disciplined corps at Boston. 

D'Estaing arrived off the harbor of Newport, July 
29th, and it was agreed between him and Sullivan 
that a joint landing should be made and a concerted 
attack pressed. Sullivan moved promptly, as he al- 
ways did, and seized Butts Hill, an outlying promi- 
nence where there was a British battery; w^hich 
exploit hurt the feelings of the French, to whom 
"the doing" was not as important as the "manner 
of doing it " ; and this " manner " not being exactly 
according to the agreement, they became affronted. 



2l6 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

Just then, however, Lord Howe appeared in the 
offing with a British fleet. Such a challenge no 
French gentleman could possibly refuse, no matter 
how momentous the consequences of accepting it, 
and D'Estaing re-embarked his troops and sailed out 
to attack the British. But a storm fiercer than the 
heaviest ordnance drove both enemies over the face 
of the deep, and gave them full occupation to save 
themselves instead of destroying each other. It was 
not until August 20th that D'Estaing brought his 
shattered fleet into harbor, and then decided to take 
his troops and his ships to Boston and refit. 

Sullivan remonstrated and Lafayette pleaded with 
no avail, and the Frenchman sailed away from the 
point of contact with the enemy. This was the sec- 
ond failure to secure cordial co-operation between 
French and English, between Saxon and Gaul. Many 
a man in General Sullivan's command bore a fire- 
lock which his father had carried at Louisburg 
against the French, and a sword which his grand- 
father had worn in fights against French and In- 
dians. It was a sore test of human nature to ask 
these men to give their hearts to the French, who 
on the first trial of friendship had failed them — as 
they felt, and as Sullivan said in a public proclama- 
tion. Not the least of the difficulties with which 
Washington struggled from this time until York- 
town, in October, 1781, was the constant effort to 
smooth the sensibilities of the susceptible French, 
and to appease their insatiable demand for honor, 
glory, and consideration. 

As soon as the fleet appeared on the coast he had 
opened communications with them with a tact, a deli- 
cacy, and a finesse which nothing could surpass. He 



THE FRENCH ALLIANCE AGAIN. 



217 



sent Laurens — French in blood, in manners, in lan- 
guage — and Hamilton — West Indian by birth — two 
youths as perfect specimens of cultured chivalry as 
ever won spurs or bore sword. Personal appear- 
ance, deportment, air, produce a profound and last- 
ing impression on human nature, and these brilliant 
young staff officers only prepared the minds of the 
Frenchmen for the appearance of their chief. The 
natural gravity and grace of Washington's carriage, 
the grand proportions of the man, the vigor of his 
intellect and the clearness of his views, at once sub- 
dued the respect and conquered the allegiance of all, 
from general and admiral to the line and the ranks. 

In letters which are absolutely unparalleled for 
delicacy, for elegance, for convincing logic, for ap- 
peals to chivalric sentiment, he persuaded, he con- 
vinced, he led his allies to follow his directions. His 
difficulty was enormously increased by the character 
of the French force. It was a mixed army and navy, 
under command of a soldier. So, to the jealousies 
of race and religion were added those of the States 
on the one side and those of the army and navy on 
the other. Washington's problem was to keep in 
touch, on friendly terms, the Puritan and the Cav- 
alier, the soldier and the sailor, the Saxon and the 
Gaul, and so imbue them with a common sentiment 
that they could begot to act in a common enterprise. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

ARNOLD AND ANDRE THE FRENCH AGAIN. 

During this period occurred an incident which 
tested Washington's character as much as any inci- 
dent of his illustrious career — the episode of the 
treason of Arnold and the execution of Andr^. If 
in the summer of 1775, before Boston, during the 
ensuing winter before Quebec, or after the campaign 
of Saratoga, any officer of rank in the Continental 
army had been requested to name the soldier who 
would most distinguish himself for gallant achieve- 
ment, and who would win the largest, most enduring 
reputation among all his comrades, he would beyond 
doubt have selected Benedict Arnold, of Connecti- 
cut. Of a superb figure, generous feelings, chivalric 
carriage, strikingly handsome features, he was *' the 
bravest of the brave," and at once attracted the at- 
tention of the commander in chief, and so deeply 
impressed him that he intrusted him with the im- 
portant command of the expedition through the 
snows and rocks and forests and torrents of Maine 
to the capture of Quebec. 

The intelligence, the fortitude, the perseverance 
with which Arnold prosecuted this expedition en- 
tirely justified the confidence and judgment of Wash- 
ington. He would have taken Quebec had he not 
been wounded and Montgomery killed at the same 



ARNOLD AND ANDRE— THE FRENCH AGAIN. 219 

moment of their assault of this fortress. Arnold 
was taken prisoner, and, after the loss of more 
than a year of his military career, exchanged, and 
returned to duty while the army was before New 
York. At the investment of and attack on and ca- 
pitulation by Burgoyne, Arnold had acted the most 
brilliant part; and his leadership, his gallantry, /^/V 
spirit, more than that of any one man, had held the 
American lines to their work and showed them the 
way to victory. He was wounded there again, and, 
instead of being thanked or promoted, was snubbed 
by the Congress and ignored by the Board of War. 
His juniors were jumped over his head, and his feel- 
ings mortified by constant slights. 

Washington had a warm feeling for the brilliant, 
handsome soldier, and sympathized deeply with his 
mortification. To soothe his feelings and mark his 
appreciation of him, while his wound disqualified 
him from service in the field he ordered him to the 
command of Philadelphia. He ought to have known 
that Arnold was not the man for such duty. To be 
the military governor of a city in time of war, when 
it was necessary to enforce the civil law with military 
force and control the troops by martial law, requires 
a mixture of coolness, patience, tact, sagacity, and 
firmness that Arnold did not possess. And when the 
civil population to be governed is divided into fierce 
factions by race, religion, or politics, the difficulties 
are ten thousand times multiplied. 

The selection of Arnold for such duty was prob- 
ably the most injudicious possible. Arnold had been 
born and bred in a social sphere entirely different 
from that to which his rank as brigadier general intro- 
duced him. He had been a druggist and bookseller 



220 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

in Hartford, Conn. Social position and attentions 
are over-valued by those who have never possessed 
or enjoyed them, and when Arnold assumed command 
in Philadelphia, he was immediately inordinately in- 
fluenced by the consideration of a rich, luxurious, 
highly refined society. Probably a soldier is con- 
trolled by no force as completely, as suddenly, and 
as temporarily as that of beautiful, cultivated, and 
rich women. To a man from Arnold's sphere of life 
the habit of command, the assertion of authority, the 
consummate ability to direct and control men and 
affairs displayed by them, is a revelation. He had 
never seen such women in the sphere from which he 
came, and he had never imagined that such women 
could exist. His mother, sisters, cousins were good, 
industrious, faithful housewives ; but women who 
could talk intelligently with the most intelligent 
men on the topics of which the latter were masters; 
whose information was as large as that of men ; 
whose business it was to know; whose judgment of 
character and of motives was instinctive and unerr- 
ing, were creatures of a world of which Benedict 
Arnold had no conception. 

Forces which overwhelmed Arnold would have 
passed unfelt over Charles Lee, Laurens, or Hamil- 
ton. The highly organized, subtle, irresistible influ- 
ence of the social machine known as " society " en- 
veloped, permeated, absolutely controlled the plain 
Connecticut farmer's son. As commanding officer 
of the principal city of America, which in wealth, 
luxury, fashion, and style far surpassed all others; 
which during the preceding year had been entertain- 
ing the gentlemen and nobility who were with the 
army under Sir William Howe and Sir Henry Clm- 



ARNOLD AND ANDRE— THE FRENCH AGAIN. 221 

ton, Arnold occupied a conspicuous place. His rank 
drew to him social attention that required handsome 
quarters, uniforms, coaches, liveries, horses, balls, 
and dinners. He took the Penn palace, the hand- 
somest residence in the city, on the pay of a briga- 
dier general. Women always attack the commander 
of the invading force, and when the American briga- 
dier assumed command of the Continental capital 
the court circle measured him at once, and captured 
him without a struggle on his part or theirs. He 
was handsome, he was vain, he was brave, he was 
generous ; what easier prey would a beautiful woman 
want, and who could be quicker made captive ? 

The belles of Sir William's staff, the dames of the 
ridiculous mock tournament with which belles and 
beaux had complimented his departure, overwhelmed 
the new commander with attentions and flattery. 
*'At Arnold's balls were not only 'common Tory 
women ' (notoriously loyal ladies), but the wives 
and daughters of Tories who were even then m 
arms against their country in the invader's camp 
in New York," wrote Joseph Reed, President of the 
Council of Pennsylvania. But, worse than that. 
Miss Margaret Shippen, one of the Tory beauties 
who had been one of the ladies "of the blended 
rose " at the Howe Mischianza, had captured Arnold 
on sight. She agreed to marry him for then, as be- 
fore and since it has been deemed wise and prudent 
for people on debatable ground to have hostages to 
fortune on either side, and in the doubt between re- 
bellion or victory, revolution or glory, it was good 
for the Shippens, a solid Tory family, to have a 
daughter, wife of one of the most distinguished rebel 
generals. The proposed alliance still further en- 



222 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

raged the Philadelphia Whigs, and through Joseph 
Reed, and his council, they were not long in making 
their fangs felt, besides their hiss. 

The Congress had made five major generals over 
Arnold's head, on the excuse that Connecticut already 
had two. Not one of them compared in service, in 
talents, in ability, or in achievement with Arnold, 
and he naturally and properly resigned. Washing- 
ton induced him to withhold his resignation for the 
present, and he then proceeded to organize a settle- 
ment of old soldiers in western New York in co- 
operation with George Clinton, his comrade of Still- 
water and Saratoga, on lands granted him by the 
Legislature of New York. While thus engaged in 
preparing to withdraw from the military service, the 
President and Council of Pennsylvania preferred 
charges against him to the Congress, for peculation, 
extortion, and misbehavior in his office of Military 
Governor of Philadelphia, and directed copies of the 
charges to be forwarded to the Governor of each 
State. 

Arnold promptly returned to Philadelphia and 
demanded an investigation, which was given him by 
a committee of Congress. The committee reported 
him not guilty, on all the specifications except the 
improper use of some army wagons to haul private 
property out of danger, and irregularity in granting 
a pass. This was a triumph for Arnold, but Reed 
and the council preferred new charges on the alle- 
gation of newly discovered evidence. The Con- 
gress referred the charges to the Council and As- 
sembly of Pennsylvania, and they were eventually 
brought before a court-martial, April 3, 1779. Reed 
secured delay to gather evidence, and the charges 



ARNOLD AND ANDR^— THE FRENCH AGAIN. 223 

and court hung over his head until December of 
that year. Miss Shippen, like a high-spirited and 
warm-hearted woman, promptly took place by her 
lover's side and married him, in the face of the 
charges, the court, and the Congress, thus testifying 
her faith in him and her contempt for them. During 
all this harassing delay General Arnold was in Phila- 
delphia, with nothing to do but w^ait on his mistress 
and wife. 

The French alliance was genuinely distasteful to 
him, as it was to very many ardent patriots. Noth- 
ing but absolute, dire, pressing, extreme necessity, 
and the conduct of the English Administration at 
home and their Hessian allies here, reconciled the 
English in America to an alliance with their hered- 
itary foes to fight against their own flesh and blood. 
The change of the issue of the war, from a resistance 
for reform to a war for disunion, also had alienated 
some and cooled many patriots. This was particu- 
larly so in Philadelphia. Arnold had no Whig asso- 
ciates. The members of Congress from the Southern 
States were all gentlemen, as were many of them 
from the Middle States and some from New Eng- 
land. Arnold was a vulgarian, a snob cutis et in cute. 
He believed that fine clothes, fine style, luxurious 
living made the highest type of men and women, and 
he imitated them. The gentlemen of the Congress — 
plain men like Madison, of Virginia; simple-minded, 
frank men like Carroll, of Maryland, or Laurens, of 
South Carolina — were not congenial to this swelling 
roysterer, nor they to him. He was thrown more and 
more under the influence of the Tory society of his 
wife's family. It is beyond a doubt that neither she 
nor they ever imagined, stimulated, or participated 



224 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



in the turpitude which was being conceived and trans- 
acted by Arnold under cover of their hospitality. 

The Tories of the Revolution for these three 
generations have been held up to universal execra- 
tion in America, but surely it is time now to see 
something of their side of the quarrel. They em- 
braced the clergy of the Church of England almost 
without exception, the great landholders of New 
York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, and the de- 
voted Jacobite population of the Carolinas. The 
education, the wealth, the culture of the Middle 
States was largely on the side of the Crown. For 
five years the revolutionary government of New 
York dared not call a General Assembly, for fear 
that it would make terms with Colonel William 
Tryon, the Royal Governor; and members of Con- 
gress from Pennsylvania were open in their expres- 
sions of desire for peace. 

Loyalty in its highest form — devotion to duty, 
absolutely regardless of consequences — exhibited it- 
self; and to this day, in Nova Scotia and New 
Brunswick, people may be found, descendants of 
American Tories, \vho look back with longing eyes 
to the lovely homes their ancestors gave up for 
their duty and their faith. With Arnold in the state 
of mind produced by the unjust, malignant Whig at- 
tack of General Reed and his associates, he irresisti- 
bly turned to the other side — the side where honor 
was cherished, valor rewarded, and great achievement 
recognized. 

Between Philadelphia and New York there were 
a thousand underground channels of communica- 
tion. During the war between the States the fash- 
ion papers were received as regularly in Richmond, 



ARNOLD AND ANDRE— THE FRENCH AGAIN. 225 

though not as promptly, as in Washington; and in 
1779 there was no difficulty, and little danger, in hav- 
ing letters delivered in either place from the other. 
Here Arnold began to write letters to Sir Henry 
Clinton, inquiring what terms could be made by an 
American officer of rank, who was disgusted at the 
Declaration of Independence and the French alli- 
ance. The intrigue was turned over by Clinton to 
Major John Andre, his adjutant general and gen- 
eral manager. Andre was the adroit man about 
headquarters. He knew everything, and was ap- 
pealed to by everybody, on every subject. His 
mind turned instinctively to intrigue, and he was an 
adept in its arts, trained by natural tendency and 
personal experience. 

At the siege of Charleston, Clinton sent him into 
the beleaguered city as a spy, and he remained there 
undetected until its surrender and the capitulation 
of Lincoln's army. He represented himself as a 
Virginian officer of the Virginian line. He resided 
at the house of Edward Shrewsberry, a respectable 
citizen suspected of disloyalty to the patriot side, 
and after the capitulation was introduced by Shrews- 
berry to his friends as Major Andre. The proof of 
this is set forth in detail in William Johnson's Life of 
Greene, and was derived by the author, a justice of 
the Supreme Court of the United States, and son of 
a patriot, from contemporary authority and personal 
testimony. Therefore when the anonymous letters, 
signed " Gustavus," came to headquarters, Major 
Andre was the party qualified to answer them. As 
" John Anderson," he conducted the correspondence 
during the summer of 1779, until he accompanied 
Clinton on his Southern expedition, when he made 



226 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

his little excursion into the domain of the secret 
service and lived in Charleston as a spy. Returning 
from Charleston, he resumed the correspondence be- 
tween " Gustavus " and '* John Anderson." On Janu- 
ary 26, 1780, the court-martial had found Arnold 
guilty of the same specifications as the former com- 
mittee of Congress had determined against him, and 
sentenced him to be reprimanded in general orders. 
Washington's reprimand was conveyed as mildly as 
it was possible for language to express it. Of course 
it only further inflamed Arnold. 

All history showed that in a civil war parties to 
it, high and low, generals and privates, constantly 
changed sides. It was not desertion. It was only a 
change of opinion, necessarily required by a change 
of condition. Monk had done it, Marlborough had 
done it; why not Arnold ? The event justified the 
act, if success crowned the move. This was the line 
of reflection forced on Arnold by circumstances. 
But, bold, blatant, and bankrupt as he was in 
fortune and in fame, a simple desertion was not 
enough. He aspired to the highest rewards, and he 
proposed to earn them by the most superlative in- 
famy. He applied to Washington for the command 
of West Point, on the ground that it was due to 
soothe his wounded honor, lacerated by the court- 
martial, its decision, and the reprimand ; and he did 
this with the distinctly formed purpose in his mind 
of selling his post for money! No such idea was 
conceivable by the high-bred and high-minded To- 
ries of the Shippen family or the Philadelphia so- 
ciety of which it was the leader. Such an idea could 
only have been conceived in the base mind of the 
Connecticut village apothecary and bookseller, ad- 



ARNOLD AND ANDRE— THE FRENCH AGAIN. 227 

mitted solely on account of his rank into the asso- 
ciation of ladies and gentlemen. 

Washington ought to have known better. He 
was a good judge of men, as his appreciation of 
Greene and Lafayette, of Gates and Conway showed. 
But he was imposed upon by the showy qualities of 
the conqueror of Ticonderoga and the leader of the 
forlorn hope against Quebec. At the bottom of it 
all lay the feeling of sympathy for the wronged, the 
ardent desire to heal a soldier's wounded honor. He 
assigned Arnold to the command of West Point, with 
the distinct understanding with him that it was the 
key of the Revolution. This key Arnold promptly 
arranged to sell to Sir Henry Clinton. 

" John Anderson " (Andre) and '' Gustavus " (Ar- 
nold) met at Haverstraw below West Point to agree 
upon the details of what was to be sold and what 
was to be paid. An American battery on the right 
bank of the Hudson soon drove down stream the 
sloop of war which had brought Andre up from New 
York for the conference. Thus left in the American 
lines by his escort, in disguise, he was supplied with 
a suit of citizens' clothes and rode for the British 
lines all night. About daylight his guide left him, 
and shortly after he fell into the hands of a patrol 
from Arnold's command, who carried him to their 
superior officer. The papers found on Andre fully 
disclosed the proposed betrayal. They were sent by 
express to Washington that morning returning from 
an interview with De Rochambeau at Newport, and, 
by curious but honest stupidity, the American officer 
forwarded to Arnold a letter from Andre. 

The express to Washington missed him on the 
road. The letter to Arnold found him and the staff of 
16 



228 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

Washington at breakfast at the Beverley House. The 
latter had stopped to examine the fortifications on 
the other side of the river. Arnold rose from the 
table, passed out, mounted a horse standing saddled 
and bridled by chance at the door, and rode for his 
life to the British vessel below. He succeeded in 
reaching it just about the time Washington reached 
West Point. Arnold in a word had disclosed his 
project and his danger to his wife. The captured 
dispatches sent to Washington followed him and were 
delivered to Hamilton before Washington's arrival. 
He met his chief coming from the river to the house 
and informed him of the treachery and escape of 
Arnold. Washington dispatched Hamilton to inter- 
cept Arnold at Verplanck's Point, but he was too 
late. Prompt orders were sent out to collect the 
troops and put the post on the qui vive. 

Arnold's treachery was the severest blow that 
Washington received during the whole war. His 
relation toward Charles Lee was not one of trust and 
confidence. It was controlled by his supreme sense 
of justice, for Lee was next in rank to himself, and it 
was proper that he should be treated with the greatest 
consideration. But he did trust Arnold. He ad- 
mired and loved him. He was a brilliant, dashing 
soldier and an able general, and he sympathized 
deeply with him at the injustice inflicted on him by 
the Congress. The jealousies and bickerings of Reed 
and the Pennsylvania Whigs, and their attacks on 
Arnold, jarred on his feelings. They had sympa- 
thized too much with the Board of War and the Con- 
way intrigue, in impatience at the strategy of "our 
modern Fabius," for him to appreciate their distrust 
of the "bravest of the brave." It was now clear to 



ARNOLD AND ANDRE— THE FRENCH AGAIN. 229 

him that the instincts of the Congress and the Penn- 
sylvanians about Arnold's character were wise, just, 
and correct, and that he had been utterly mistaken. 

His confidence in his own judgment was shaken 
to the core. Whom could he trust ? Who was true ? 
By what intrigues was he surrounded ? Gates was 
an Englishman, and had been an enlisted soldier ; 
Steuben, De Kalb — all held important commands, 
and may have been shaken by the failing fortunes 
of the Colonial Confederacy. Members of Congress 
were, he knew, dissatisfied with him. How far had 
that feeling extended, and how many were in British 
pay ? All these questions rose darkly for answer, 
but his indomitable soul never quailed. 

Major John Andre was Sir Henry Clinton's chief 
of staff. He had been caught as a spy, and was or- 
dered before a court-martial composed of the ranking 
officers of the American army, Lafayette being one. 
A spy is not entitled to a trial. He may, by the law 
of war, be shot or hung in flagrante delicto. He can 
not surrender. He may not make himself a prisoner 
of war. Now, the service of a spy may be patriotic ; 
it maybe valuable; it requires courage; but it is 
never the honorable service of a soldier. No com- 
manding officer can order his subordinate, com- 
missioned or enlisted, to doff his uniform and pene- 
trate the enemies' lines, pretending to be a friend and 
betray them. The dangers from spies are so great 
that everywhere, in all wars, in all ages, the penalty of 
detection has been death. One single spy may de- 
stroy a movement, neutralize a combination of one 
hundred thousand men, paralyze an army, and defeat 
a campaign. He may cost tens of thousands of lives 
and many millions of money. Therefore the doom 



230 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



of the spy discovered is death — swift, sure, sudden 
death. Major Andre was found guilty and condemned 
to death. He had played a great game and had lost 
it, paying the penalty; and no just man, British or 
American, can ever blame the American commander 
in chief for directing the execution of the judgment 
of the court-martial. Andre was a bright, handsome, 
accomplished young gentleman. He had been a 
toast with the loyal belles of Philadelphia during 
the occupation. Every effort, appeal, threat was 
made by the British general to save his staff officer. 
But the South Carolina members of Congress knew 
of Andre's spy exploits in Charleston, and they 
alone would have prevented pardon or commutation 
of his sentence, even if his crime had not been 
such as to preclude all possibility of mercy. 

Andre had gone into his enemy's lines under the 
sacred protection of a flag of truce. He had used 
his inviolability to arrange a perfidy which might 
have wrecked the cause of a whole people. It would 
have cost confiscations, prosecutions, hangings in- 
numerable if it had succeeded, as he and his colleague 
in crime hoped and intended. It failed, and he died 
for it. As Washington said, he was captured as a 
spy, he was tried as a spy, he was convicted as a spy, 
and he was executed as a spy. He might, under the 
law, have been hanged five minutes after he was 
delivered by the patrol to their officer on post. But 
he was fairly tried and justly convicted and exe- 
cuted. Washington never afterward, in conversation, 
mentioned Arnold's name. In a letter to Greene he 
expressed the opinion that Benedict Arnold was of 
so low and base a nature that he did not think he 
suffered from his dishonor. 



ARNOLD AND ANDRE— THE FRENCH AGAIN. 



231 



After the failure at Newport other feelings had to 
be appeased as well as the French, for New Eng- 
landers had susceptibilities as sensitive as those of 
the Gaul. Sullivan — ardent, high-spirited, generous, 
chivalric — felt the refusal of D'Estaing at Newport 
like misbehavior in the presence of the enemy, and 
he said so in private and in public, in conversation and 
in orders to the troops. And on the drop of a glove 
he would have justified his language and his opinions 
with his own sword against D'Estaing or any French 
officer of proper rank on any turf about Newport or 
around Boston. For gentlemen — Puritan and Cava- 
lier, French and English — in that generation believed 
it the duty of every one to back his opinion with his 
arm, and to defend his honor with his life. 

Lafayette was the kinsman of D'Estaing, and he 
would have challenged Sullivan, but Lafayette be- 
belonged to the family of Washington, and Sullivan 
had saved Washington's life at Germantown. Kins- 
men fought for kinsmen, friends for friends, staff of- 
ficers for their chiefs. General John Cadwalader 
challenged and fought General Thomas Conway be- 
cause the latter had written disrespectfully of the 
commander in chief. Colonel John Laurens chal- 
lenged and fought Charles Lee for a similar offense 
against his chief. But the influence of Washington 
composed the quarrel, held Lafayette in check, and 
made him an active peacemaker between the dis- 
cordant elements. He prevented hostilities, if he 
could not restore cordial feelings. Besides these 
jars between subordinates, there was a chill in the 
highest quarters. It had been much discussed in 
Paris as one of the conditions of the alliance and 
the auxiliary force, that the whole should be under 



2^,2 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



French command. It was not conceivable, much 
less permissible, that a marshal of France, a lieuten- 
ant general in the army of his most Christian Maj- 
esty, should be subordinate to a militiaman, a rough 
backwoods hunter, scout, and bushwhacker. But 
Franklin, with intuitive sagacity, insisted that if the 
French went, they should go as assistants and not as 
leaders. He did not possess the feelings or the ex- 
perience of Washington on this subject. 

Washington's whole life, as also that of his 
father and grandfather, had been spent in a struggle 
against the French for the Ohio, and he never di- 
vested himself of the fear or the suspicion that if the 
French power was too prominent or too predominant 
in securing independence from Great Britain, the 
Canadians would gladly rush to their old allegiance, 
to which they were bound by ties of blood and re- 
ligion, and who had been separated from their mother 
country only fifteen years before by the Treaty of 
Paris. The sagacity of Franklin and the firmness of 
Washington saved the continent from the re-estab- 
lishment of French influence here, and many woes. 
It so happened that the French never accomplished 
anything substantial, by land or by water, from their 
appearance in the summer of 1778 until the campaign 
of Yorktown, in October, 1781, where French assist- 
ance was decisive. The large force of five thousand 
men was landed, and co-operated with the Conti- 
nental army, but the fleets were cruising up and 
down in quest of ** glory," and undertaking enter- 
prises independent of the strategy of the commander 
in chief. D'Estaing made an attack on Savannah and 
failed, the second French attempt thus proving dis- 
astrous, and then he sailed away for the West Indies. 



ARNOLD AND ANDRE— THE FRENCH AGAIN. 



233 



Sir Henry Clinton withdrew his detachment from 
Rhode Island and concentrated everything at New 
York. The British strategy of the war abandoned 
New England, and with it further effort to seize the 
line of the Hudson and thus cut off the head of the 
rebellion. It was believed that something might be 
done in the South, where population was sparse, 
where slavery partly paralyzed military resistance, 
and where loyalty, not more extensive than in the 
Middle States of New York, New Jersey, and Penn- 
sylvania, was more belligerent and aggressive ; where 
the friends of the old order backed their opinion 
with their blood, their lives, and their fortunes. 
There was not as large a percentage of Tories in 
the Carolinas as in Pennsylvania or New York, but 
the former believed in standmg up for their princi- 
ples, regardless of cost; the latter were opposed to 
disorder, disturbance, or trouble of any kind for any 
cause. Therefore, Lord George Germaine and the 
ministry at home determined to try the plan of cut- 
ting off around the edges, that of dividing through 
the center and across vital parts having utterly 
failed. 

Washington, during the winter of lyyS-'yg, had 
become persuaded that the war in the North was 
over. After four years campaigning the British oc- 
cupied their camp on Staten Island, less than when 
Gage had evacuated Boston. The year 1779 was 
one without hope, without energy, without fortune 
to the Americans. The French auxiliaries had par- 
alyzed the State governments. The people at home 
supposed that the coming of the army and navy of 
the grand monarch settled the business; for, with 
true provincial training and ideas, they exaggerated 



234 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

the high qualities of the great people on the other 
side of the ocean, whose generals were marquises 
and earls, counts and barons. 

The French alliance was of real detriment for a 
time, and exertion by the States, and by the people 
who constituted the States, almost ceased and died 
out. The finances flickered out as public credit 
burned lower and lower, until the currency issued by 
Congress, being paper promises to pay bearer, stipu- 
lated amounts in money, became absolutely worth- 
less. The idea of declaring that a piece of paper 
was money, and of fixing its value by act of Congress, 
had not then been born. The pay of the troops 
amounted to nothing, but even that was not given 
to them. In the winter of ij'jS-'jg the New Jersey 
regiments refused to march until they received their 
pay — five months in arrears. They got it. 

In the spring the Connecticut line mutinied for 
their pay, followed by the Pennsylvania line. Wash- 
ington reduced these troops to discipline by prompt 
firmness; but when a newly enlisted Pennsylvania 
regiment had the audacity to follow the example of 
its elders, on tap of drum he put it down, and hung 
two of the mutineers. He sympathized with the old 
soldiers, whose patience had been worn out by starva- 
tion, nakedness, disease, and marches; they were 
brought to their senses by reason and vigorous force 
firmly applied. But for a set of green recruits, who 
had never smelled powder, or marched barefoot, 
or lain out in the snow and mud, or been without 
meat for three days, or without meat or bread for 
two — for such fellows to complain was pure impu- 
dence. He hung some to satisfy the others. It did 
satisfy them ! The whole year was taken up with 



ARNOLD AND ANDRE— THE FRENCH AGAIN. 



235 



appeals to the States to strengthen the Congress, 
and to the Congress to brace up the army. 

Washington saw how the Congress was deterio- 
rating year by year. He entreated Henry to re-en- 
force Richard Henry Lee, who was bearing on his 
shoulders the support of Washington and the army in 
Congress. It has been suggested that for some un- 
known reason Lee became estranged from him, and 
it has been intimated that he sympathized with, if he 
did not actually participate in, the conspiracy of 
"the cabal." This is an error that in justice to a 
great soul should be corrected. Richard Henry Lee 
and Washington had been comrades from boyhood. 
Their mothers were friends before them, and to the 
day that death separated them their mutual respect, 
affection, and devotion knew no check nor chill. 

During the summer Sir Henry Clinton occupied 
Stony Point, on the left bank of the Hudson below 
West Point, and Paulus Hook, where Jersey city now 
is, to give him control of a reach of the river and 
secure his communications with his friends in New 
Jersey, Pennsylvania, and the South. 

Washington was dissatisfied with the operation of 
the French alliance. It accomplished nothing, and 
rather weakened the Continentals than aided them. 
He sent Lafayette — whom he appreciated as a gentle- 
man, a soldier, a man of ability, and a true friend — 
to France to secure more troops and closer co-opera- 
tion. He made Lafayette understand that the war 
was over in the North, and must be decided in the 
South. Unless that section was redeemed, the prob- 
abilities were that with acknowledgment of the in- 
dependence of the Northern States would come the 
re-establishment of the Spaniards in possession of 



236 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

Florida and all the great territory from the mouth 
of the Cape Fear to the Mississippi. She already 
possessed the continent from the Mississippi to the 
Pacific, and such an end of the struggle would put 
her astride, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, of the 
continent from which France had been expelled only 
fifteen years before. If France wished to avert such 
a result, she must join Washington in saving the 
South by a campaign in which he must have the 
earnest, loyal co-operation of a French fleet on 
the sea and a French army on the land. 

Washington sent General Lincoln to South Caro- 
lina to take command, with distinct and emphatic 
instructions that at every cost he was to save his 
army ; under no circumstances was he to lose it. 
The possession of posts, positions, or lines he was 
too great a soldier to value. The army was the 
vital force; it was the right arm, the sword, to be 
wielded by intelligent courage; and the absolute 
ultimate, final necessity to the cause was to keep an 
army in the field at all times. In June, 1780, Lin- 
coln lost Charleston and surrendered his army, di- 
rectly contrary to the mature views and distinct 
orders of the commander in chief. The conquest of 
the South seemed secure. Georgia was already re- 
constructed, and South Carolina must soon be. Gen- 
eral " Mad " Anthony Wayne surprised and captured 
Stony Point, as Lee did Paulus Hook, and Sir Henry 
was again pushed back to Manhattan Island. 

In July, 1780, a French fleet arrived, with an army 
of six thousand men under command of General 
Count De Rochambeau, who was to report, and did 
report, to the headquarters of the American army, as 
distinctlv subordinate to it and within its command. 



ARNOLD AND ANDRE— THE FRENCH AGAIN. 2 



17 



This was of enormous service, as it removed at once 
all the paralyzing influence of disputes and jealousy 
about rank and command. The French contingent 
were no longer allies. They were part of the Ameri- 
can army and navy, and, like it, subject solely to the 
control of the American commander in chief. 

The Southern campaign had become the turning 
point of the war. Washington dared not leave New 
York nor the Congress. If Sir Henry escaped from 
his control he might do serious damage along the 
Hudson and up the Mohawk Valley; but if the Con- 
gress once got away from him, it was certain to 
bring on disaster, so he could not go South. The 
best man he had was Greene, the Rhode Island 
blacksmith, who during the four years of experience, 
observation, and meditation had matured into a great 
soldier. Greene, disgusted with Congress, had, in 
July, 1780, resigned his place as quartermaster gen- 
eral, and had gone home. Washington recalled him 
into the service. He was thoroughly imbued with 
Washington's ideas of the strategy of the war — that 
he must never hold on to a place so as to risk his 
army ; he must avoid pitched battles, but wear his 
enemy out by marching, by alarms, and by dis- 
ease. He was to entice Cornwallis, who was in 
Charleston, to leave his base, and draw him into the 
interior. The Briton breathed the sea air; he lived 
on the salt breeze; the fresh blasts from the moun- 
tains would wither his energy and paralyze his vigor. 

Cornwallis was to be drawn far enough into the 
interior to cut his communications, then to be sur- 
rounded by a blazing circle of militia, and, thus iso- 
lated, destroyed. Or, if that failed, and he stuck to 
tide water, he was to be fastened there until the 



238 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

French fleet could blockade him from his base and 
the open sea, and the allied armies could be concen- 
trated on him to force a capitulation and end the 
war. This strategy was thought out and discussed 
thoroughly with Greene. Cornwallis must be drawn 
North, so as to enable the concentration of the 
Northern army from New York with the Southern 
army from Carolina. General Greene went South, 
took charge of the debris of Gates, reorganized and 
reconstructed an army — the basis of it being the 
veterans of the Maryland line — and assumed com- 
mand at Charlotte. 

Morgan, affronted at the slights of the Board of 
War — who constantly promoted his juniors over his 
head — had also resigned and gone home to the val- 
ley of Virginia, but Camden brought him to life at 
once. "It was no time to think of rank," he said; 
"the country was in danger, and every man must 
help to save it." The Virginians rallied around him. 
The remnant of the Maryland line, consolidated 
into three regiments of about one hundred each, was 
as bright and as highly tempered as a Toledo blade, 
in charge of Colonel John Eager Howard. The 
militia of the two Carolinas formed a body of mount- 
ed gunmen well adapted for rapid movement and 
bush fighting, entirely unequal to closed ranks and 
leveled bayonets in the open field. With these 
commanders — Greene, Morgan, Howard, Lee — and 
such troops, Washington commenced the first moves 
in the last stage of his great game. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE CAMPAIGN IN THE SOUTH. 

The failure of the combined land and naval op- 
erations against New York and Newport did not dis- 
courage Washington, or impair his determination to 
use the French power on the sea, with that of the 
States on the land, to strike a decisive blow. He hda 
succeeded in the strategic move against Burgoyne 
in the North, owing to the active and zealous sup- 
port of New England. He had failed in his plan to 
capture Sir William Howe and his army in Phila- 
delphia, owing to the treachery of Charles Lee, who 
withheld re-enforcements in time to hold the Delaware, 
and the failure of New Jersey and Pennsylvania to 
rise in the enemy's rear and on his flanks, as New 
England had done at Bennington, at Stillwater, and 
at Saratoga. 

But thenceforward his main effort was first to 
get his enemy in the South into such a position that 
he could isolate him, by the use of the French fleet, 
from his base of supplies, for the open sea was the 
British base; and, second, raise the country on him, 
surround him, capture him, end the war, and achieve 
liberty and independence. He impressed on Lincoln, 
commanding in South Carolina, that the defense of 
posts, positions, and lines was impracticable. The 
Americans held the interior line of defense. The 



240 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



British must move on exterior lines of attack, and by 
keeping the American defense foot free it could be 
moved from point to point as necessity required, and 
always confront its adversary, extended on the cir- 
cumference of a circle, with superior force moving on 
the interior. The attempt to hold positions and lines 
would give the enemy the initiative, and he would 
thus select his own time and place of attack. Lin- 
coln, in any and every event, was to save his army. 
Posts and ports, towns and cities, might all be sur- 
rendered and retaken. An army taken captive was 
an army destroyed. Its esprit, its morale could never 
be resurrected, even if its men and material could 
be completely replaced. 

AVashington was forced by necessity to hold the 
line of the Hudson. That and the Chesapeake were 
the only two absolutely requisite strategic conditions 
to be maintained; all others might be given up, as he 
had abandoned Boston and New York and Philadel- 
phia. But local populations have an intense horror 
of the enemy. The feeling is somewhat a senti- 
mental one, for the rules of war in modern times 
forbid the outrages of earlier states of society. 
Therefore, when Sir Henry Clinton and Cornwallis 
approached Charleston, S. C, in February, 1780, 
there was a unanimous and vociferous outcry among 
the South Carolinians that Charleston should not 
be abandoned, and Lincoln allowed himself to be 
cooped up there. 

Sir Henry Clinton, finding he could not loosen 
Washington's hold on the North River by forays 
along the Sound and raids up the Hudson, deter- 
mined to force his hand by a move in another quar- 
ter. He embarked eight thousand men at New 



THE CAMPAIGN IN THE SOUTH. 



241 



York, and after Christmas, 1779, sailed for Savannah, 
with Cornwallis second in command. He was soon 
followed by Lord Rawdon, afterward Earl of Moira 
and Marquis of Hastings, with three thousand more. 
I'his move forced Washington to dispatch all his 
Carolina and Virginia troops to the assistance of 
Lincoln, together with Pulaski and his legion of 
the odds and ends of nations and races. 

Clinton landed in South Carolina, moved to the 
rear of Charleston, cut the city off from the country, 
and on May 12, 1780, Lincoln surrendered three 
thousand Continentals, with a large supply of muni- 
tions of war. The strategic points in the interior 
were at once occupied, and in June, Clinton returned 
to New York, leaving Lord Cornwallis with five thou- 
sand regulars to consolidate the conquest and restore 
the unhappy country to its allegiance. 

Georgia, before then, had been subdued, and Pu- 
laski lost his life in a futile attempt, by French and 
Americans, to retake Savannah. Marion and Sumter 
alone kept the flag of rebellion flying among the 
palmettoes. It seemed as if the rebellion was to be 
destroyed from the edges, and not by cutting it into 
pieces. Georgia and South Carolina quiet, it only 
remained to advance into North Carolina and Vir- 
ginia to arouse, rally, and protect the Union sentiment 
there, just as, eighty years after, Sherman marched 
by the same routes to extinguish the rebellion and 
revive the Union sentiment among the grandsons of 
the people who had known Lord Cornwallis and 
Colonel Banastre Tarleton. 

The anti-Washington feeling in Congress, the sec- 
tional sentiment, sought this occasion to mortify him 
and to make another move toward displacing him. 



242 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



Gates, with the Army of the North, had captured one 
British army; with an army in the South he would 
capture another, and then there would be no doubt 
that he was the general for the war, the destined 
saviour of the liberties of the continent, and all 
would agree that he was the Moses selected by 
Providence to lead us through the Red Sea of re- 
bellion, and to command the army on its march to 
the promised land. 

As in the assignment of Gates to the command at 
Albany, Washington did not agree to this estimate 
by the Board of War and the New England influence, 
nor assent to his being intrusted with great respon- 
sible command. But his opinion was disregarded, 
and General Gates was sent South to redeem the 
Carolinas. Charles Lee, who knew him well — knew 
his ignorance, his self-conceit, his weakness of will, 
his intellectual incapacity — sent him word, by a mu- 
tual friend, to " take heed lest his Northern laurels 
turn to Southern willows." 

Gates arrived at Hillsborough, N. C., July 19, 
1780, where he found the Maryland and Delaware 
lines, of about two thousand men, under Major 
General the Baron de Kalb, who while on the march 
from the North had reached that point on June 20th, 
when the news of Lincoln's surrender reached them. 
De Kalb halted until he could secure some co-opera- 
tion from Richard Caswell, Governor of North Caro- 
lina. The arrival of Gates, with orders to assume 
command of the army and of the States, relieved De 
Kalb of responsibility, and he calmly awaited orders. 
The British held no positions in North Carolina ex- 
cept a depot on the Cape Fear, the present city of 
Wilmington. They held Camden, under command of 



THE CAMPAIGN IN THE SOUTH. 



243 



Lord Rawdon, in the center of South Carolina, where 
roads from east, west, north, and south converged, 
and the possession of Camden would cut the com- 
munications of all posts, east, west, and north, with 
headquarters at Charleston. Therefore General 
Gates proposed the brilliant strategic feat of the 
capture of Camden before Lord Cornwallis could 
reach it from Charleston. 

He moved by the shortest line, and arrived at 
Camden before Cornwallis, but by indecision and 
delay lost his advantage and opportunity, for Corn- 
wallis came before he could make up his mind to 
attack Rawdon. He did so at last on August 16, 
1780, with three thousand men, of whom fourteen 
hundred were veterans of the Maryland line, against 
two thousand regulars under Cornwallis, and in a 
few hours was utterly routed, dispersed, destroyed. 
The only ray of light on that black field is the chiv- 
alry of the First Regiment of the Maryland line, 
which by repeated and reiterated bayonet charges 
stayed the onward sweep of the British line, and the 
heroic death of their commander, De Kalb, who died 
on the field from many wounds. Gates fled igno- 
miniously, and never drew rein until he reached 
Hillsborough, two hundred miles off, in four days. 
Cornwallis halted a month at Camden before he 
moved north into North Carolina. 

The destruction of the army of the South, the 
submission of Georgia, the conquest of South Caro- 
lina, and the impendmg subjugation of North Caro- 
lina, threatened the most tremendous consequences. 
War had been waged for five years; independence 
had been declared four years ; the alliance with 
France had been accomplished two years, and there 
17 



244 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



was still no apparent end to the struggle. Florida 
Blanca, the Spanish Prime Minister, urged Vergennes, 
the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, to make peace 
between the revolted colonies and their home Gov- 
ernment on the basis of the retention of New York 
and Rhode Island by the latter, and the acknowledg- 
ment of the independence of the rest. The wily 
Spaniard argued that such a settlement would leave 
the English Protestants in America so divided that 
they would exhaust themselves and the mother 
country in internecine fraternal struggle, and leave 
the dominion of the sea again to Spain, as it had 
been before the failure of the Grand Armada. 

The Frenchman, with a wider view and farther 
sight, believed that the way to break Great Britain's 
supremacy was by force, not diplomacy, and that a 
great, prosperous, energetic, aggressive, Anglo-Nor- 
man, Scandinavian, Celtic, Gothic, Saxon race in 
America would more certainly overcome Great Brit- 
ain by the arts of peace, than the trite device of un- 
dermining the adversary by encouraging internal 
broils and intestine struggles. Quarrels may be 
composed and strife may be stilled, but power pro- 
duced and supported by industrial development will 
overcome and outlast conditions created by and rest- 
ing on cunning, adroitness, and the manifestations of 
passions, religious, racial, or national. 

Therefore the French statesman elected to create 
a great power on the Western continent, instead of 
trying to involve it in ruin. The French alliance 
had amounted to nothing in the field. It supplied 
some money and arms and munitions, and a super- 
abundance of military adventurers and soldiers of for- 
tune like Conway, but it was really disadvantageous, 



THE CAMPAIGN IN THE SOUTH. 



245 



in that it weakened the self-reliance of the States, 
and tended to turn their eyes toward France for suc- 
cess, instead of relying on their own hearts and arms 
alone. The finances of the confederacy were abso- 
lutely nil. There was no courage, no brains, no ex- 
perience in their management. 

The Articles of Confederation still hung on be- 
tween the States unratified. There was no author- 
ity in the Congress. It could not enlist a man or 
raise a dollar by taxation. It could and did issue 
promises to pay, and flooded the country with cur- 
rency which was estimated at the value of the expec- 
tation it represented. Virginia maintained a post at 
Fort Pitt, the former Fort Duquesne, and constructed 
a chain of forts from the head waters of the Ohio 
along the Alleghany range to the North Carolina 
line, while she claimed the county of Kentucky from 
the mouth of the Kanawha to the Mississippi, and 
the county of Illinois, comprising all the territory 
west of the Ohio, to the same river. 

The other States refused to accede to the con- 
federation until Virginia agreed that these territo- 
ries should be considered the common property of 
all the States. She, on the other hand, insisted that, 
as they had been conquered by Virginian arms and 
paid for by Virginian blood and money, they be- 
longed to her; and that the objections to her title 
were based not on the common interest, but on selfish 
considerations to save the speculative rights of men 
prominent in the States, and who had been conspicu- 
ous in the colonial governments — among them Lord 
Dunmore, of Virginia, and Governor Tryon, of North 
Carolina and New York. With this wrangle of jar- 
ring interests, the general depreciation of public 



246 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

morals, always accompanying war, with a fluctuating, 
uncertain medium of exchange, steadily debauched 
the public virtue. 

Washington was more concerned with the social 
degeneration than even the gloomy military outlook. 
Speculators, engrossers, blockade runners overshad- 
owed society, and easy and rapid gains produced 
easier and more rapid expenditure, until the luxury 
of a few only accentuated the sufferings of the many, 
and the aspirations of all were rapidly tending to- 
ward the accumulation of money more than to the 
acquisition of liberty. He wrote, he urged, he en- 
treated leading men of the States to apply their 
whole energies toward correcting this fast-growing 
corruption, demonstrating to them the fact that, if 
it could not be cured, there would be nothing left 
worth contending for. 

Looking to Virginia, as ever, for support and ex- 
ample, he impressed George Mason with the sense 
of the immense danger, and urged him to rouse the 
General Assembly to action. He knew nothing of 
the intrigue of the Spaniards for peace with a divided 
continent, but his phenomenal political sagacity 
warned him of the danger ; and while Florida Blanca 
was writing to Vergennes to secure peace, he was 
writing to Mason that the highest duty and most 
pressing necessity was the continuance of the war. 
To the General Assembly he set forth at length, 
through a letter to Mason, the actual conditions, and 
demonstrated that peace now could only result in 
untold disaster, and that their only safety lay in 
vigorous preparation for, and defense against, Corn- 
wallis's invasion, now impending. 

Thomas Jefferson had become Governor, and the 



THE CAMPAIGN IN THE SOUTH. 247 

State, aroused, proceeded to put herself in position 
for what fortune might send. One difficulty about 
the French alliance had been that the troops and 
fleets sent were allies, and not part of the mili- 
tary and naval force of the confederacy. The 
French commanders co-operated in good faith, it is 
true, in the strategy of the American commander in 
chief, but they took no orders from him. In Febru- 
ary, 1779, Washington sent Lafayette to France, 
ostensibly to see his family, but really to secure 
from the ministry the detachment of a substantial 
body of trained troops to report to Washington, and 
to form part of his command. In April he returned, 
and informed Washington that France would soon 
send the desired re-enforcement. 

On July loth the French fleet arrived at Newport 
with five thousand veteran soldiers, the elite of the 
armies of his Most Christian Majesty, under com- 
mand of General the Count de Rochambeau. The 
fleet consisted of eight ships of the line, two frigates, 
and two bombs. As soon as Sir Henry heard of this 
arrival he moved an army against it. Embarking a 
large force on his fleet and transports in New York 
harbor, on July 31st he sailed up the Sound east- 
ward. Without a moment's hesitation Washington 
headed everything he had on foot, on horse, and on 
wheels for Kingsbridge, intending to "swap queens" 
with the British general and capture New York 
while he was struggling with Rochambeau at New- 
port. This countermove promptly recalled the ex- 
pedition eastward, and by August 4th it was safely 
back in New York. 

On September 21st Washington had an interview 
with De Rochambeau, at Hartford, Conn. The com- 



248 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

mander in chief was attended with more state and 
ceremony than the French marquis general. M. de 
Rochambeau was accompanied by six officers — the 
admiral, his chief of engineers, his son the Viscomte 
de Rochambeau, and two aids-de-camp, of whom 
Count de Fersen was one. Washington had with 
him Major General the Marquis de Lafayette, Gen- 
eral Knox, Chief of Artillery, M. de Gouvion, Chief 
of Engineers, and six aids-de-camp, and an escort of 
twenty-two dragoons. 

Says the Count de Fersen, in his diary written 
that very day : *' M. de Rochambeau sent me in ad- 
vance to announce his arrival, and I had time to see 
this man, illustrious if not unique in this century. 
He is handsome and majestic, while at the same time 
his mild and open countenance perfectly reflects his 
moral qualities; he looks the hero; he is very cold; 
speaks little, but is courteous and frank. A shade 
of sadness overshadows his countenance, which is 
not unbecoming, and gives him an interesting air." 

This pen picture by the bright young Frenchman 
accurately portrays the appearance and describes 
the manners of a Virginian gentleman of the epoch, 
of estate, reputation, and weight in his province. 
Gravity, decorum, stately deportment, were charac- 
teristic of that society, and the description would 
have done as well for George Mason, of Gunston 
Hall, or Colonel Thomas Ludwell Lee, of Berry 
Hill, or Daniel Carroll Brent, of Richlands, or 
Thomas Fitzhugh, of Boscobel, or William Fitzhugh, 
of Ravensworth, or Colonel McCarty, of Marmion, or 
many more of his kinsmen and friends on both sides 
of the Potomac. Washington was no phenomenon 
of deportment, but was the type of his class — the 



THE CAMPAIGN IN THE SOUTH. 



249 



very highest and best type of the Virginian country 
gentleman of his period. 

The conference established perfectly cordial re- 
lations between the two commanders, but nothing 
was determined except the general strategy of their 
operations : to keep Sir Henry Clinton from re- 
enforcing Cornwallis by constant threats against 
him in New York, and to isolate Cornwallis within 
reach of the Northern Army, cut him off from the 
sea by the French fleet, and capture his whole force. 
To this end it was agreed to re-enforce the naval 
power by an addition to the fleet from that of the 
Count de Guichen in the West Indies. Washington 
sent to him a request for ships of the line, and De 
Ternay sent him an order to re-enforce the fleet in 
Newport harbor; but De Guichen sailed for France. 
A second division of French war ships and troops 
was prepared for America, but they were blockaded 
in the harbor of Brest, as Admiral de Ternay was 
in that of Newport by a superior British force, and 
never succeeded in getting out. 

De Rochambeau marched his army across Con- 
necticut and joined Washington, and then they 
threatened Sir Henry Clinton. In the meantime the 
steady insults by Congress had forced Morgan and 
Greene out of the service, as it was hoped would be 
the case with Washington. But Gates's disaster at 
Camden required a new arrangement, and in great 
trouble the Congress appealed to the commander in 
chief for a commander for the Southern army. He 
selected Greene. The rank of major general was 
conferred on him, and he took command at Char- 
lotte, N. C, of the fragments of Continentals that 
Gates had left and the militia that Caswell was able 



250 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



to embody. With General Greene he sent his corps 
d' elite, the legion of Henry Lee, made lieutenant col- 
onel for his brilliant surprise of Paulus Hook, and 
Kosciusko as engineer. 

He appealed to Morgan, who promptly reported 
to Greene, and Congress tardily righted the wrong 
by conferring on him the appropriate rank. With 
Greene in the saddle in North Carolina, Washington 
knew that that part of the movement would be prop- 
erly executed. He was to draw Cornwallis North, 
Steuben was sent to Virginia to keep Greene's com- 
munications open with the army, and Lafayette was 
directed to take command of such Virginia militia 
as Governor Jefferson could raise for him, and to 
hang around Cornwallis as soon as he entered the 
State, keep him employed by constant threats, and 
worry him out of the open country back to tide wa- 
ter. Greene fell back through North Carolina with 
Cornwallis hot on his track, until at last he gave him 
battle at Guilford Court-House, for the purpose of 
crippling him and keeping him near the water. After 
the battle of Guilford, Cornwallis fell back to his 
base on the Cape Fear, and then marched on Sher- 
man's projected route of eighty years after, through 
the eastern part of the State to Petersburg, Va. 
There he was confronted with Lafayette, the ma- 
jor general of twenty-three years, who refused to 
fight, and who constantly eluded him. He crossed 
the James River to Malvern Hill, where McClellan 
fought in 1862, turned up the Pamunkey, following 
the Frenchman ; by Hanover Town, where Grant 
crossed in 1864, and forced Lafayette across the 
North Anna, where Grant fought in 1864, back to 
Ely's Ford on the Rappahannock, by a road which 



ROUTE OF THE ALLIES, 
AUGUST-SEPTEMBER, 1781, 

FROM THE HUDSON TO YORKTOWN. 



PENNSYLVAN 




THE CAMPAIGN IN THE SOUTH. 25 1 

he cut through the country, known as ''Marcus 
Road," or the Marquis's Road, to this day. 

Thence Cornwallis dispatched Tarleton on a raid 
to Charlottesville where Governor Jefferson and the 
Virginia Legislature were assembled, and Lafayette 
moved up the river, and about Warrenton joined 
Wayne, who with one thousand Continentals was 
moving South to support him. With Wayne's re- 
enforcement he cut Tarleton off from his command, 
and drove him to the Point of Fork, in Fluvanna 
County, on the upper James, sixty miles above Rich- 
mond. From the North Anna Cornwallis was obliged 
to march sixty or seventy miles west, three days' 
march, to rescue his dashing raider, who had become 
enveloped in the toils set for him by the French gen- 
eral and his Virginians. As soon as his troops were 
reunited the British general marched down the north 
or left bank of the James by Richmond, across the 
Chickahominy, to York River. He was closely fol- 
lowed up by Lafayette. 

In the meantime Washington had been pressmg 
De Grasse, who commanded a great French fleet in 
the West Indies for the conquest of Jamaica, to 
unite with De Rochambeau and himself in a com- 
bined land and water attack on Sir Henry Clinton m 
New York, or on Cornwallis in Virginia. It was not 
until the summer that he had a definite reply from 
De Grasse that he elected to take the Chesapeake as 
the scene of his operations. The area was large and 
the water deep, and the bay suited the great vessels 
of his command better than the bar and contracted 
waters of New York harbor. 

Sending Lafayette orders to hold Cornwallis until 
he got up, he set to work to persuade his own army 



252 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

and Sir Henry Clinton that he intended to attack the 
latter in New York. De Grasse's fleet consisted of 
twenty-eight ships of the line and six frigates, carry- 
ing seventeen hundred guns and twenty thousand 
men. The presence of such a force would deprive 
the English of the command of the sea, cut them off 
from their base, and isolate Clinton or Cornwallis, 
whichever it was directed against. De Grasse de- 
cided against whom the operation should be directed 
by selecting the Chesapeake. 

On August 19, 1781, five days after receiving De 
Grasse's dispatch, Washington's army crossed the 
Hudson. He left Lord Stirling with a small force 
to watch the gate from Canada at Saratoga, and Gen- 
eral Heath with four thousand Continentals to hold 
West Point. His army consisted of two thousand 
Continentals, composed of two regiments of New 
Jersey, the First Regiment of New York, Colonel 
Hazen's Canadian regiment, Colonel Olney's regi- 
ment of Rhode Island, Colonel Lamb's regiment of 
artillery and the light troops under command of 
Colonel Scammel, and four thousand French troops 
under General de Rochambeau. " The Rhode Island 
regiment, among others, is extremely fine," writes a 
French officer, the Baron Cromot du Bourg, at the 
time. 

The French contingent contained the Regiments 
Bourbonnais, Deux Fonts and Saintonge, Soisonnois, 
and other corps d'dite of the army of France. It was 
the only time that Continentals ever marched with 
French. They were afterward to be brought close 
together in the comradeship of arms and the noble 
rivalry of battle in the trenches and before the re- 
doubts at Yorktown. The route was through New 



THE CAMPAIGN IN THE SOUTH. 253 

Jersey, and not until New Brunswick was passed did 
even the general officers dream that any other enter- 
prise was in execution than the attack on New York. 
So closely had the secret been kept between Wash- 
ington and De Rochambeau, that not until the army 
passed through Philadelphia, September 3d to 5th, 
did Sir Henry Clinton divine the object of the move- 
ment — that it was not against him, but was a concen- 
tration on the interior lines on the army in Virginia. 
Just below Philadelphia Washington received a dis- 
patch by courier that De Grasse had arrived in the bay, 
and the news was communicated to the column. The 
tidings strung them up to the highest pitch of enthu- 
siasm, and they swung along with the free stride and 
square-set shoulders that marches and bivouac and 
battle for six years had given them. Their uniforms 
were ragged, but their bayonets were bright; their 
shoes were tattered, but their hearts were light ; and 
no hunger, no fatigue, no labor could depress the men 
marching to the fulfillment of their dream of six 
years — liberty and independence, glory and peace ! 
The French, natty, clean, precise, followed, much 
pondering at the power which could give such look- 
ing men such spirits. They were reviewed by the 
Congress and the French minister as they passed 
down Chestnut Street by the State House. 

On September 7th the head of the allied army 
reached the '' Head of Elk," and was pushed on board 
the bay craft there collected for its transportation to 
the James. Washington, with his staff, rode rapidly 
through the country, passing through Baltimore on 
the 8th, to Mount Vernon on the 9th, where he was 
joined by De Rochambeau on the loth, and where 
he stayed until the 12th. Thence they rode by Fred- 



254 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



ericksburg and New Castle to Williamsburg, which 
place they reached on the 14th, to Lafayette's infinite 
relief. They rode fifty miles a day. 

As soon as De Grasse opened communications 
with the latter, he gave him three thousand French 
infantry, which made his position before Cornwallis 
perfectly secure. The transports with the troops pro- 
ceeded down the bay, past York River and Old Point 
Comfort and turned up the James to Williamsburg, 
where the army debarked. Admiral de Barras, hav- 
ing escaped Graves's blockade at Newport, joined 
the Count de Grasse with his ships and transports, 
and the latter having been sent to Baltimore for the 
remainder of the French army, which had marched 
there from the Head of Elk, arrived at Williamsburg 
on the 28th, and the whole army was assembled. 

The investment of Cornwallis was begun at once, 
and completed by the 30th — the Americans on the 
right, the French on the left, under the Marquis St. 
Simon and the Viscount de Viomenil. Cornwallis 
having seized and fortified Gloucester Point, on the 
opposite side of York River, the Americans and 
French under Generals de Choise and Weedon and 
the Duke de Lauzun blockaded him there. Admiral 
Graves followed De Barras from Newport and at- 
tempted to force the entry to the Chesapeake, but 
the overwhelming force of De Grasse met him at the 
Capes, and after a severe engagement drove him off. 

Thus the grand movement which Washington had 
prepared for the last year was accomplished. He 
had left Sir Henry Clinton in New York. He had 
precipitated on Cornwallis, in Virginia, an over- 
whelming military force, while the enormous naval 
preponderance of his allies gave him absolute con- 



THE CAMPAIGN IN THE SOUTH. 255 

trol of the sea. Clinton might evacuate New York 
and come with Graves to Cornwallis's deliverance. 
But then Heath would occupy the strategic center of 
the war, and De Grasse would prevent the junction 
of the two British armies. Even if he succeeded in 
getting into York and uniting with Cornwallis, he 
would have abandoned the struggle, given up all the 
territory won by six years of war, and risk all in a 
final trial with the allies when their combinations 
rendered his destruction more than probable. The 
move was a perfect checkmate. 



CHAPTER XV. 

YORKTOWN — CARRYING THE NEWS TO CONGRESS. 

The army of Cornwallis consisted of seven thou- 
sand British regulars. That of the allies was com- 
posed of fifty-five hundred Continentals, good troops, 
seasoned by marches, battles, and campaigns ; thirty- 
five hundred Virginia militia, who for the preceding 
year had been thwarting Cornwallis up and down the 
James, the Pamunkey, and the Rappahannock, under 
Lafayette, and were now under command of Thomas 
Nelson, Governor of Virginia; and seven thousand 
French, as fine troops as ever fought under the lilies. 
Washington began his investment in the regular way. 
He drove in Cornwallis's outposts, forced the evacu- 
ation of his advanced works, and opened parallels 
against his heavy fortifications around his position 
on deep water. The first parallel was opened Octo- 
ber 6th, at six hundred yards from the British works; 
the second, on the nth, at three hundred yards. 
Two redoubts, advanced from the British line, seri- 
ously incommoded the working parties of the attack- 
ing force, and it became necessary to silence them. 

Hamilton, on the general staff, was commanding 
a light battalion under Lafayette. The reduction of 
the left redoubt (the American right) was intrusted 
to Lafayette and the Americans ; of the right, to the 



YORKTOWN. 



257 



French. The regiment Gatinais was to lead the 
French storming party. It had been formed from 
that of D'Auvergne, of which De Rochambeau had 
been colonel, and was known as "■ D' Auverg7ie sans 
tacheT In the detail for the attack Lafayette gave 
the right to Major Gimat, of his staff, with the 
Rhode Islanders. 

Hamilton promptly claimed the command of the 
storming party, as it was his tour of duty on the 
lines as officer of the day; and Lafayette declining 
to change the arrangement, Hamilton appealed to 
the commander in chief. It appearing that Hamil- 
ton was on duty at the time, he was within his right 
in his claim to lead the advance, and it was awarded 
him. Gimat's regiment was given the right of the 
line, with Hamilton's battalion of light infantry in 
support, Hamilton in command of the whole. The 
Baron de Viomenil was to lead the French column 
of assault against the enemy. 

These preparations — the riding of staff officers 
hither and thither, the relieving of pickets and the 
calling off of sentries, and that tense excitement in 
bodies of men which is felt, not seen — had been go- 
ing on all the afternoon of the 14th. De Rocham- 
beau had ridden over to the grenadiers of D'Auvergne 
and had inspected them. Washington had ridden 
down to the Rhode Islanders and complimented 
their trig uniforms and the polish of their bayonets, 
and the general staff had collected itself toward the 
right of the American lines, on the earthworks of a 
battery, in plain view of the enemy. All these 
movements going on for hours, in sight, only meant 
one thing to old soldiers — an assault would be made 
that night somewhere, almost certainly on the two 



258 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

commanding and advanced redoubts. After sunset 
the American and French works became lined with 
soldiers without arms. The unusual spectacle 
brought out the British, and thus both armies were 
drawn to witness the stirring spectacle of an assault 
on fortifications. Washington dismounted, sent his 
horse to the rear, and took his place on a parapet 
with Knox and Lincoln and their staffs. 

They could see Hamilton moving along his line 
as they lay flat on the ground, and could feel in his 
alert, vigorous air, that he was saying, " Look out, 
boys ! this is an affair of cold steel. Not a gun is to 
be fired, and I want to see the man who will beat me 
into that work." On the French side there was not 
so much life. De Viomenil was standing, in faultless 
uniform and perfect gloves, a little to the right of his 
regiment, formed in a column of companies, with a 
section of pioneers armed with axes on the right. 
Hamilton, never having seen an assault, supposed 
that axes were the proper thing, so he scraped to- 
gether a dozen and gave them to some of his men, 
with instructions to rush ahead and cut those fallen 
trees out of the way, and so make room for him. 

The sun set, and the shades of that October even- 
ing spread over the panorama until, about eight 
o'clock, one single rocket sprang into the air, and at 
the moment Hamilton could be seen with his sword 
flashing round his head as he gave the order, " Up, 
and forward ! " Forward they went with a rush to 
the abattis, and the axemen started to cut their way 
through; but Hamilton, jumping from tree-trunk to 
tree-trunk, was ten yards ahead. The regiment 
broke forward and followed their leader. At the 
bastion the slope was too steep, and he slipped back ; 



YORKTOWN. 



259 



but one of the men stooped, so that he put his foot 
on his shoulder, and he was thus '' boosted " into the 
work — the first man there ; but Gimat and the Rhode 
Islanders and the light infantry came piling in, one 
over the other, and the thing was done in a breath. 
He did it with empty guns and by the bayonet alone. 
Not a shot was fired. Lieutenant-Colonel Laurens, 
another aid to the commander in chief, with eighty 
men, at the same time took the redoubt in reverse, 
so as to prevent the escape of any of the detachment 
defending it. 

It was too dark to see all this from the point 
where the generals were standing. They could hear 
the British fire and see the flash of their guns, but 
could not tell on which side victory was until an ear- 
piercing yell went up from the inside of the work. 
" That's Hamilton ! " said one of the generals to the 
other. But the firing about the French party con- 
tinued. They were halted, being regular soldiers 
and well drilled, until their pioneers had cut away 
the obstructions; and while the pioneers were cut- 
ting abattis the British were shooting Frenchmen. 

The instant Hamilton was comfortably fixed and 
had his prisoners disarmed, he started a young lieuten- 
ant to the Baron de Viomenil : '' Colonel Hamilton's 
compliments to the Baron de Viomenil, and begs to 
inform him that he is inside, and to inquire if he can 
be of any assistance to the baron." To which the 
Frenchman sent back word in the same gay spirit : 
" The Baron de Viomenil's compliments to Colonel 
Hamilton, and he begs to say that, though he is not 
in yet, he will be in two minutes, and will stay when 
he gets in. He thanks the colonel for his courtesy, 
but does not require help." In a moment the French 
18 



26o GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

win the parapet; there are a few musket flashes in 
the gloom, and then there is silence that tells the 
story of the bayonet, and then a cheer. The thing 
was done. The last move of the last piece in the 
great game that had been begun at Newport, Hart- 
ford, and Dobb's Ferry in the North, and at Char- 
lotte and Camden in the South, more than a year 
before, was made, and the game was won. 

Washington, impassible, grave, stern, with no sign 
of the tremendous pressure under which he was 
laboring, except a flash of the eye, turned to the 
attendant generals, and said : " Gentlemen, the work 
is done, and well done ! Let us ride ! William, 
bring me my horse ! " and they all rode off into the 
black night, deeply impressed with the immense 
importance of the events that had just taken place. 

As long as De Grasse held York River the result 
was mathematically certain. The only doubt resulted 
from the Gallic temperament, and the possibility of 
another attack on him by Rodney from the West 
Indies and Graves from the Atlantic station. Wash- 
ington knew that in such a contingency it would be 
impossible to control the French appetite for glory, 
and he was reasonably anxious on that score. This 
doubt solved, the capture of the redoubts meant the 
speedy, prompt capitulation of Lord Cornwallis, The 
next day Cornwallis attempted to re-establish himself 
in the position from which he had been expelled, but 
was easily repulsed. The redoubts were included on 
the second American parallel, and howitzers securely 
mounted on them. 

Sir Henry Clinton made no sign. Cornwallis pro- 
posed to cross the river to Gloucester Point and force 
his way north to rejoin Clinton. It was an utterly 



YORKTOWN. 261 

impracticable, foolhardy scheme, and not even des- 
peration could justify it. But a sudden storm frus- 
trated even that; and on the 17th he hoisted a 
white flag, his drums beat a parley, and he sent out 
an officer with a proposition for an armistice of 
twenty-four hours, while commissioners from each 
army could settle the terms of the surrender of the 
posts of York and Gloucester. Not knowing what 
might happen on the bay in that time, Washington 
gave him but two hours' time in which to send in his 
proposition. 

Those sent by Lord Cornwallis were not satisfac- 
tory, so the Viscount de Noailles and Lieutenant-Colo- 
nel John Laurens, commissioners for the allies, met 
Colonel Dundas and Major Ross, on the part of the 
British, to arrange terms. The whole of the i8th was 
spent in discussion, and on the 19th a draft of terms 
of capitulation was submitted to the British officers. 
" Are not those terms somewhat harsh, colonel ? " said 
Dundas to Laurens. *' They are copies of those 
granted to General Lincoln by the marquis at 
Charleston," said Laurens. They were transmitted 
to Lord Cornwallis with a note from General Wash- 
ington, informing him that he expected them to be 
signed by eleven o'clock that day, and that the gar- 
rison would march out and ground arms at 2 p. m. 
They were signed, and the posts of York and 
Gloucester, with their garrisons, arms, ordnance, and 
supplies, were surrendered to General Washington, 
and, the ships, transports, and naval supplies to the 
Count de Grasse, as commander of the French fleet. 

At two o'clock the British army marched out 
along a road on which the Americans were formed 
on the right and the French on the left, facing in- 



262 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

ward — Washington and staff on the right of his 
own line, De Rochambeau and staff on the right of 
his, facing Washington. They marched with shoul- 
dered arms, colors cased, and their drums beating a 
march. The terms of surrender required that they 
should beat a British march, so they selected as the 
one for the occasion one called " The world turned 
upside down." Cornwallis, unworthy of his char- 
acter and unfortunately for his fame, was unable to 
face the inevitable, and sent General O'Hara to rep- 
resent him in the mortifying ceremony. Superbly 
mounted and perfectly equipped, O'Hara, when he 
reached the end of the line, turned his horse out to 
General Washington, to whom he tendered his sword, 
with " Lord Cornwallis's excuses and regrets that in- 
disposition compelled his absence on so interesting 
an occasion." Cornwallis had received Lincoln's 
sword at Charleston on precisely the same terms he 
was now being forced to comply with ; and General 
Washington, bowing to General O'Hara, directed him 
to General Lincoln, to whom he was to deliver his 
sword and to surrender, and whose directions he was 
to obey. So Lincoln, marched the British column 
out into the open field, where they grounded their 
arms in sulks and temper. 

The surrender was over by four o'clock, and the 
news must at once be sent to the Congress. Who 
should have that honor ? On the brilliant staff of 
the commander in chief, besides Hamilton and Lau- 
rens, was Tench Tilghman, of Maryland. He was of 
that family which in England had made its mark by 
intellectual vigor, and in the provinces of Pennsyl- 
vania and Maryland filled the first place in the revolt 
against the mother country. He was from the east- 



YORKTOWN. 263 

ern shore of Maryland, and from the County of Talbot, 
which for eight generations has been the center of a 
noble culture and a generous chivalry. His uncle 
had been President of the Revolutionary Convention 
of Maryland, and every man of the breed able to 
ride a horse was in arms for his country. 

Hamilton and Laurens had had their chance in 
the assault on the redoubt and the negotiations for 
the surrender ; so fairness required that Tilghman 
should have the honor of bearing the news of 
victory to Congress. By six o'clock on the evening 
of the 19th, with his dispatches in his breast pocket, 
he had his horse on an open sailboat, flying down 
the York River. Out in the open bay he turned 
his bows north, but lost a whole night aground 
on Tangier shoals, on account of the ignorance of 
his boatmen. Reaching Annapolis, he found that a 
dispatch, dated the i8th, from De Grasse to Governor 
Thomas Sim Lee, had preceded him by a day, so he 
turned at once with his horse and boat across the 
bay toward Philadelphia. He lost a day in a calm 
between Annapolis and Rock Hall, in the County of 
Kent. From there to Philadelphia is about eighty 
miles as the crow flies. De Grasse's courier had 
passed through the country the day before. The 
people were on tiptoe to hear the news from York. 
Their hearts stopped as they imagined they heard 
the great guns of the English and the French boom- 
ing over the waters in the still night. Mothers, wives, 
sisters, daughters, and sweethearts all looked with 
wistful eyes to the South for some sign of the issue 
of the weary struggle. 

It was the supreme effort of American liberty. 
It was the very crisis of freedom. But the flower of 



264 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

Maryland was in that fight, and the lower counties 
on the Delaware had sent their bravest and best to 
back their brethren of the eastern shore. One of the 
miracles of history, attested time and again by indis- 
putable evidence, is that when the minds and hearts 
of a whole people are at a white heat of excitement 
and expectation, knowledge comes to them independ- 
ent of the senses. The Greeks believed that the 
great god Pan spread the knowledge of victory or 
defeat at the time of their occurrence, hundreds of 
miles away. The result of the battle of Platasa was 
known the day it was fought, and the news of Ther- 
mopylae spread over Greece through the silent cham- 
bers of the air carried by the arrows of light. The 
victory of Pharsalia was known in Rome at the time 
it occurred, and the events of Waterloo were dis- 
cussed on the London Stock Exchange before it ad- 
journed on the afternoon of June i8th. 

So when Tench Tilghman landed at Rock Hall, 
for his hundred miles' ride through the country, he 
found the hearts and minds of men and women 
aglow with a divine frenzy. They felt what had oc- 
curred without knowing it, and were wild for con- 
firmation by knowledge. Up through Kent, without 
drawing rein, this solitary horseman sped his way. 
When his horse began to fail, he turned to his nearest 
kinsman — for they were mostly of the same blood — 
and riding up to the lonely farmhouse would shout, 
*' Cornwallis is taken ! — a fresh horse for the Con- 
gress ! " and in a minute he would be remounted 
and pushing on in a free gallop. All the night 
he rode up the peninsula, not a sound disturbing 
the silence of the darkness except the beat of his 
horse's hoofs. Every three or four hours he would 



YORKTOWN. 265 

ride up to some homestead, still and quiet and dark 
in the first slumber of the night, and thunder on the 
door with his sword-hilt, " Cornwallis is taken! — a 
fresh horse for the Congress ! " Like an electric 
shock the house would flash with an instant light 
and echo with the pattering feet of women, and be- 
fore a dozen greetings could be exchanged, and but 
a word given of the fate of the loved ones at York, 
Tilghman would vanish in the gloom, leaving a trail 
of glory and of joy behind him. So he sped through 
Kent, across the head of Sassafras, through Chris- 
tiana, by Wilmington, straight on to Philadelphia. 
The tocsin and the slogan of his news spread like 
the fire in the dry grass, and left behind him a broad 
blaze of delirium and of joy. 

" Cornwallis is taken ! " passed from mouth to 
mouth, flew through the air, was wafted on the 
autumn breeze, shone with the sunlight. " Cornwallis 
is taken ! Liberty is won ! Peace is come ! Once 
more husbands, fathers, brothers, sons, lovers, shall 
return to the hearts that gave them to the cause ! 
Once more shall joy sit on every hearth, and happi- 
ness shine over every rooftree." When or where in 
all the tide of time has such a message been carried 
to such a people? Liberty with justice! Peace 
with honor! Victory with glory! Liberty, peace, 
justice, victory, honor, and glory now and forever, 
one and inseparable ! These were the tidings that 
Tench Tilghman bore when he rode into Philadel- 
phia at midnight of the 23d, four days from the army 
of York. The dispatch from De Grasse had been re- 
ceived, but the Congress and the people waited for 
Washington. Nothing was true but tidings from him. 
Rousing the President of the Congress — McKean 



266 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

— Tilghman delivered his dispatch to him, and the 
news was instantly made public. The watchmen, as 
they went their rounds, cried, " Twelve o'clock, all is 
well, and Cornwallis is taken ! " In a minute the 
whole city was wild ; lights flashed in every window ; 
men, women, and children poured into the streets. 
The State House bell rang out its peal, " Liberty 
throughout the land, to all the inhabitants thereof ! " 
And thirteen sovereign and independent States were 
proclaimed to all the world. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

PEACE, AND SURRENDER OF HIS COMMISSION. 

Washington had no doubt but that the capitu- 
lation of Cornwallis's army was conclusive of the 
struggle, and that the administration of Lord North 
would not be able to put another army in the field 
for the reduction of the rebellious colonies. But it 
was quite uncertain how far Washington would be 
able to stimulate the States to renewed resistance. 
Georgia was subdued; South Carolina pinioned, 
though fiercely strugglmg by Marion and Sumter, 
to get loose, greatly aided and encouraged by the 
genius, the daring, and the intelligence of Greene. 

The Congress was tired of the war; the States 
were worn out; the people, behind all, had nearly 
given up. If it had not been for the French, Con- 
gress would have dispersed, the State governments 
dissolved, and Lord Dunmore and Tryon would 
have been re-established in enlarged proconsulships, 
and confiscation and hanging would have been the 
order of the day. The suppression of the rising of 
1745 in England had given the rebels of America 
warning of what was to be expected by them if they 
failed. Public credit did not exist, and, as a matter of 
fact, gold and silver coin was almost entirely absent. 
A little of it was hoarded, but most of it had per- 
meated, evaporated, percolated through the lines, as 



268 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

money always does from places of danger to places 
of safety. All the gold and silver had gone into 
British hands for British security. 

When Washington proposed to move his eastern 
regiments South, to complete the operations on Corn- 
wallis, it was absolutely necessary to get sofiie money 
to give them a portion of pay, for the families they 
were to leave behind. His private fortune and es- 
tate of Mount Vernon had been mortgaged before 
to keep troops in the field, in the terrible stress of 
i777-'78. He had not money enough to pay an 
express to take a letter from his camp on the Hud- 
son to the French minister in Philadelphia, but was 
obliged to trust it to the ordinary post. So, when 
he prepared to move, he called on Robert Morris, 
his unfailing and unfaltering support, for cash, and 
Morris started to hunt it among the Quakers. They 
had none; and he actually went to the Count de 
Rochambeau, without Washington's knowledge, and 
borrowed from him twenty thousand hard dollars, 
which Morris promised to return by October ist. 

Relying on luck — which never deserts those who 
rely on themselves — Morris, who when he obtained 
the money had not the faintest idea of where he 
could find it to return it according to promise, was 
supplied by Henry Laurens, who arrived in Bos- 
ton on August 25th, with two and a half million 
livres in cash, part of the six million granted, given, 
or loaned by the King of France. So French gold 
actually paid the American troops to go to York- 
town. There were seven thousand French there, 
and fifty-five hundred American Continentals. The 
French fleet held the water, and without it there 
would have been no Yorktown, as there would also 



PEACE— SURRENDER OF HIS COMMISSION. 



269 



have been none without De Rochambeau. The 
country in October, 1781, wanted peace. It wanted 
to stop fighting, and peace was the very worst thing 
it could have. 

The danger was that the French might agree to 
a general peace on the basis of the uti possidetis^ and 
this would leave all Georgia, Charleston, and the low 
country of South Carolina, Wilmington on the Cape 
Fear, New York city, and, substantially, Rhode 
Island, in the possession of the English — the Tories, 
the loyalists — perpetual exasperating wounds, like 
broken spearheads thrust into the side of the Union, 
to irritate and harass and destroy forever until re- 
moved by heroic surgery. Amid the universal de- 
lirium of self-congratulation and exaggeration of 
achievement — the necessary and natural conse- 
quence of success — the great labor was to keep 
somebody's head straight and cool. " We are great 
men, great statesmen, great soldiers ! See our mag- 
nificent strategy ! We have swept the British flag 
from the seas and penned it into three or four posts 
on land ! " Such was the feeling in the Congress, in 
the States, among the people. But Washington knew 
that there was not a word of truth in it ; that if it 
had not been for De Rochambeau's arrival, the Con- 
gress would have made terms with the British com- 
missioners, and have swiftly taken Lord North's 
pardon on their knees; and he knew that now, un- 
less the French were firm, the Congress would make 
peace on the basis of the uti possidetis without the 
slightest hesitation. 

As soon, therefore, as he had marched his paroled 
prisoners from Yorktown, he sent Greene everything 
he could spare to support him in South Carolina, 



2/0 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



and started Wayne for Georgia. To the Congress 
and to the leading men in the States he wrote, as 
was his custom, at great length, explaining the situ- 
ation, and making clear the very great danger by 
which the cause of American independence and 
liberty was threatened. Peace now, he said, would 
be disaster, second only to absolute subjugation. 
It would inevitably lead to future incessant war, 
intestine struggle, and subjugation by some foreign 
power, even if the mother country abandoned us. 

These admonitions, exhortations, and explana- 
tions were begun at Yorktown, and he never ceased 
them until the definitive treaty of peace recognized 
by name the thirteen free, sovereign, and independ- 
ent States, who had declared their independence on 
July 4, 1776, and for whom he had struggled and 
fought. On his return to the army of the North he 
found great dissatisfaction and deep-seated discon- 
tent. The war was over. Everybody had got rich, 
and what they wanted, except the soldiers; nothing 
was done for them, and they were to be turned out on 
the roadside to beg, or starve, or rob. What justice 
was there in that ? What right had Congress to put 
honest men in such a dilemma, or to present to them 
such an alternative ? These were hard questions to 
answer. Washington rode from Yorktown through 
Fredericksburg, Alexandria, and Annapolis to Phila- 
delphia. Everywhere he was received with the most 
intense enthusiasm and warmest devotion. , 

No event has occurred in American history 
which has ever elicited so much feeling as the sur-. 
render at Yorktown, and the subsequent triumphant 
march of Washington through the country. He was 
absolutely in control of everything. He was omnip- 



PEACE— SURRENDER OF HIS COMMISSION. 



271 



otent as far as mortal power could be, for he could 
do whatever Congress or the States could do ; but 
he could not revive dead credit or reinvigorate para- 
lyzed currency. At the raising of a finger he would 
have been intrusted with all authority on just such 
terms as he chose to mark out, and could have been 
Protector, President, Dictator, or King, as he pleased. 
It is certain that no such wish ever sullied his soul. 
The question was discussed in many circles, and 
of necessity the discussion must more or less have 
reached his ears. He spent the winter of i78i-'82 
with the Congress at Philadelphia, and did not join 
the army at Newburg until April of the latter year. 
There he found the discontent of the army, officers 
and men, rank and file, worse than ever. 

Colonel Lewis Nicola, a fussy character who had 
commanded an invalid battalion about Philadelphia, 
wrote him a letter, explaining at great length that 
the cause of the lack of provision for the soldiers 
was the form of government, or no-government, 
under which every one was suffering; that the only 
relief that could be secured by the country was in 
the setting up a king, and that he was the man se- 
lected by Providence for the place. He did not say, 
but the inference was unavoidable, that Providence 
had also sagaciously chosen him, Nicola, to announce 
the choice, and to superintend the arrangements for 
carrying that choice into effect. The proposition was 
absurd. Notwithstanding the gush of the Middle 
and Northern States, the climate of the Chesapeake 
was exceedingly unpropitious for a new growth of 
kings. They might have tolerated James HI, or 
one of the heirs of the Charleses, but they certainly 
would never have submitted to any upstart, pinch- 



2^2 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



beck royalty. The house of Hanover was too par- 
venu for them. Notwithstanding Washington must 
have understood the feather-headed and irresponsi- 
ble character of Nicola, he embraced the opportunity 
to put himself on record on a subject which he knew 
was the topic of grave discussion among responsible 
people. He wrote : " With a mixture of great surprise 
and astonishment I have read with attention the sen- 
timents you have submitted for my approval. ... I 
am much at a loss to conceive what part of my con- 
duct could have given encouragement to an address 
which to me seems big with the greatest mischiefs 
that can befall my country. If I am not deceived in 
knowledge of myself, you could not have found a 
person to whom your schemes are more disagree- 
able." It may be unjust to suspect that this letter 
was more the result of careful deliberation than an 
indignant outburst of outraged civic virtue, but it 
certainly will bear that interpretation. Washington 
knew Nicola, and was aware that nothing from him 
merited serious attention ; but he also knew that 
loose talk of the kind was floating about, and he 
considered it wise to stop it at once. The Northern 
States might have tolerated a king, the Southern 
never would. The French army rejoined him at 
Verplanck's Point, on the Hudson, and his task was 
thenceforward to bring the war to a conclusion. 
Sir Guy Carleton, who had succeeded Sir Henry 
Clinton in command at New York, and Admiral 
Digby, in charge of the fleet, officially informed him 
of the movements in Parliament looking to a recog- 
nition of the States and a cessation of hostilities. 
But Washington insisted to his correspondents, the 
Governors of States, and to the Congress, that the 



PEACE-SURRENDER OF HIS COMMISSION. 273 

only sure reliance for independence was prepara- 
tion for war — active, aggressive war. He found a 
paper circulating in the army, signed by general and 
field officers, setting forth the grievances of the sol- 
diers, and calling for a general meeting of officers. 
He issued a general order censuring the temper of 
the call, and appointing the time and place for a 
meeting to be held on Saturday, March 15, 1783. 

The meeting was held, and General Gates called 
to the chair, when the commander in chief appeared. 
He apologized for being present, which he had not 
intended, he said, when he issued the order directing 
the meeting. The diligence, however, which had 
been exhibited in circulating anonymous writings 
rendered it necessary that he should give his senti- 
ments to the army on the nature and tendency of 
them. He then read a carefully considered address, 
in which he showed the great danger of exasperating 
the feelings of the army, which, he admitted, had 
great cause for complaint, and he said: ''For my- 
self, a recollection of the cheerful assistance and 
prompt obedience I have experienced from you 
under every vicissitude of fortune, and the sincere 
affection I feel for an army 1 have so long had the 
honor to command, will oblige me to declare, in this 
public and solemn manner, that for the attainment 
of complete justice for all your toils and dangers, 
and the gratification of every wish, so far as may 
be done consistently with the great duty I owe my 
country and those powers we are bound to respect, 
you may fully command my services to the utmost 
extent of my abilities. 

" While I give you these assurances, and pledge 
myself in the most unequivocal manner to exert 



74 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



whatever abilities I am possessed of in your favor, 
let me entreat you, gentlemen, on your part, not to 
take any measures which, viewed in the calm light of 
reason, will lessen the dignity and sully the glory 
you have hitherto maintained. Let me request you 
to rely on the plighted faith of your country, and 
place full confidence in the purity of the intentions 
of Congress ; that previous to your dissolution as an 
army they will cause all your accounts to be fairly 
liquidated, as directed in the resolutions which were 
published to you two days ago ; and that they will 
adopt the most effectual measures in their power to 
render ample justice to you for your faithful and 
meritorious services. 

"And let me conjure you, in the name of our 
common country, as you value your own sacred 
honor, as you respect the rights of humanity, and as 
you regard the military and national character of 
America, to express your utmost horror and detesta- 
tion of the man who wishes, under any specious pre- 
tenses, to overturn the liberties of our country, and 
who wickedly attempts to open the floodgates of 
civil discord and deluge our rising empire in blood. 

"By thus determining and thus acting, you will 
pursue the plain and direct road to the attainment of 
your wishes; you will defeat the insidious designs of 
our enemies, who are compelled to resort from open 
force to secret artifice ; you will give one more dis- 
tinguished proof of unexampled patriotism and pa- 
tient virtue rising superior to the pressure of the 
most complicated sufferings ; and you will, by the 
dignity of your conduct, afford occasion for pos- 
terity to say, when speaking of the glorious example 
you have exhibited to mankind, ' Had this day been 



PEACE-SURRENDER OF HIS COMMISSION. 



275 



wanting, the world had never seen the last stage of 
perfection to which human nature is capable of at- 
taining.' " 

Washington then bowed and withdrew, and Knox 
at once offered resolutions, seconded by Putnam, 
reciprocating his expressions of confidence and af- 
fection, and asserting that no circumstances of dis- 
tress would ever induce the army to sully the glory 
acquired by so much blood and eight years' faithful 
services. They reiterated their confidence in Con- 
gress and their country, and requested the com- 
mander in chief to write the President of Congress, 
earnestly requesting a speedy decision on the late 
address forwarded by a committee of the army. He 
did so, and Congress speedily passed a resolution pro- 
viding for five years' full pay to be given officers and 
men on their discharge. 

The general treaty of peace acknowledging the 
independence of the States by name was signed at 
Paris, January 20, 1783. On March 23d, a French 
vessel of D'Estaing's fleet arrived at Philadelphia, 
bringing a letter from Lafayette, and the official an- 
nouncement of the execution of the treaty. In a 
few days Sir Guy Carleton infornied Washington of 
the fact, and that he was ordered to proclaim a gen- 
eral cessation of hostilities by land and sea, which 
he did. A similar proclamation was issued by Con- 
gress on the 17th of April. Peace was announced in 
general orders on the 19th day of April, on the eighth 
anniversary of the battle of Lexington. The men 
were freely furloughed, and allowed to take with 
them their arms and accoutrements. 

While the main army thus dissolved without dis- 
order, some incidents occurred not equally credit- 
19 



2;6 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

able. About eighty new recruits of the Pennsyl- 
vania line, stationed at Lancaster, suddenly mutinied, 
and marched to Philadelphia, where they were joined 
by about two hundred soldiers from the barracks, 
surrounded Congress and the Supreme Executive 
Council of Pennsylvania, and demanded justice, with 
threats of violence if their demands were not com- 
plied wMth in twenty minutes. Congress adjourned 
to Princeton, and Washington dispatched General 
Howe with fifteen hundred veterans to quell the 
mutiny. Several of the mutineers were tried by 
court-martial, two condemned to death, but par- 
doned, and four received corporal punishment. By 
a proclamation of Congress of October i8th, all fur- 
loughed officers and men were discharged, and all oth- 
ers were to be discharged on November 3d. Sir Guy 
Carleton evacuated New York on the 25th of Novem- 
ber, and American troops took possession of the city. 
On December 4th, Washington took leave of his 
officers at Fraunce's tavern, in the city of New York, 
and started on his long ride to Annapolis, where Con- 
gress was then in session, to resign his commission 
and thence to Mount Vernon and home to Virginia. 
He stopped at Philadelphia to adjust with the Con- 
troller of the Treasury the accounts of his personal 
expenditures from the day he left Philadelphia in 
1775 down to December 13, 1783. These accounts 
were kept in his own handwriting with the utmost 
exactness, and included money expended for secret 
service and various incidental charges, with vouchers 
for all payments. The gross amount was fourteen 
thousand five hundred pounds sterling, for money 
actually expended ; no pay was charged or received. 
His account was paid. 



PEACE—SURRENDER OF HIS COMMISSION. 277 

He arrived at Annapolis on December 20th, where 
elaborate and ceremonious preparations were made 
for his reception. On his arrival he addressed a let- 
ter to the President of Congress, requesting to know 
in what manner it would be most proper to offer his 
resignation — whether in writing or at an audience. 
The latter mode was adopted, and the Hall of Con- 
gress — the Senate Chamber of the General Assembly 
of Maryland — appointed for the ceremonial ; the day, 
Tuesday, December 23, 1783. A committee was ap- 
pointed by Congress to arrange the ceremonial for 
this proceeding, for it was felt to be an important 
historical event, which must be celebrated with due 
order and proper solemnity. 

During the war the Congress was constantly 
struggling with the apprehension of a dictatorship, 
and among them the fear of Washington grew, as his 
reputation and influence enlarged. They always 
claimed and asserted the superiority of the civil over 
the military power, and even in the very crisis of 
their fate bore themselves as ambassadors of sover- 
eign States, to whom the army and its commander in 
chief were subordinate. " On Monday and Tuesday, 
September 3 and 4, 1781," says the contemporary 
record, " the French army, under command of his 
Excellency Count de Rochambeau, passed in review 
before his Excellency the President, and the Honor- 
able the Congress of the United States, at the State 
House in this city (Philadelphia). The President 
was covered; his Excellency General Washington, 
commander in chief, the Count de Rochambeau, etc., 
stood on his left hand, uncovered." The army was 
on the march for Virginia, York, and Cornwallis. 
The committee of Congress on the reception reported 



278 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

the details of the ceremony with great minuteness. 
General Mifflin, Washington's old quartermaster gen- 
eral, was president. Nine States were present. The 
reception was by the ambassadors of sovereign States 
to their victorious general and the country's most 
distinguished citizen; illustrious, but citizen only — 
nothing more. 

When General Washington, escorted by his staff, 
entered the Chamber, the members of the Congress 
remained seated and covered ; the general was shown 
by the Secretary of Congress to his seat specially 
provided for him ; his staff remained standing. The 
President informed him that the Congress is ready 
to receive his communication. The general then 
arose and read his address: "Mr. President: The 
great events on which my resignation depended hav- 
ing at length taken place, I now have the honor of 
offering my sincere congratulations to Congress, and 
of presenting myself before them to surrender into 
their hands the trust committed to me, and to claim 
the indulgence of retiring from the service of my 
country. 

" Happy in the confirmation of our independence 
and sovereignty, and pleased with the opportunity 
afforded the United States of becoming a respectable 
nation, I resign, with satisfaction, the appointment 
I accepted with diffidence — a diffidence in my abilities 
to accomplish so arduous a task, which, however, 
was superseded by a confidence in the rectitude of 
our cause, the support of the supreme power of the 
Union and the patronage of Heaven. The success- 
ful termination of the war has verified the most 
sanguirie expectations; and my gratitude for the 
interposition of Providence, and the assistance I have 



PEACE— SURRENDER OF HIS COMMISSION. 



279 



received from my countrymen, increases with every 
review of the momentous contest. 

"While I repeat my obligations to the army in 
general, I should do injustice to my own feelings 
not to acknowledge in this place the peculiar serv- 
ices and distinguished merits of the gentlemen who 
have been attached to my person during the war. 
It was impossible that the choice of confidential offi- 
cers to compose my family should have been more 
fortunate. Permit me, sir, to recommend in particu- 
lar those who have continued in the service to the 
present moment as worthy of the favorable notice 
and patronage of Congress. 

" I consider it as an indispensable duty to close 
this last act of my official life by commending the 
interests of our dearest country to the protection of 
Almighty God, and those who have the superintend- 
ence of them to his holy keeping. 

" Having now finished the work assigned me, I 
retire from the great theater of action, and, bidding 
an affectionate farewell to this august body, under 
whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer my 
commission, and take my leave of all the employ- 
ments of public life." 

After advancing to the chair and delivering his 
commission and a copy of his address to the Presi- 
dent, he returned to his place and received, standing, 
the answer of Congress delivered by the President, 
sitting: 

"Sir: The United States in Congress assembled 
receive with emotions too affecting for utterance the 
solemn resignation of the authorities under which 
you have led their troops with success through a 
perilous and doubtful war. Called upon by your 



28o GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

country to defend its invaded rights, you accepted 
the sacred charge before it had formed alliances, and 
while it was without funds or a government to sup- 
port you. 

" You have conducted the great military contest 
with wisdom and fortitude, invariably regarding the 
rights of the civil power through all disasters and 
changes. You have, by the love and confidence of 
your fellow-citizens, enabled them to display their 
martial genius, and transmit their fame to posterity. 
You have persevered until these United States, aided 
by a magnanimous King and nation, have been en- 
abled, under a just Providence, to close the war in 
freedom, safety, and independence ; on which happy 
event we sincerely join you in congratulations. 

" Having defended the standard of liberty in this 
New World, having taught a lesson useful to those 
who inflict and to those who feel oppression, you 
retire from the great theater of action with the 
blessings of your fellow-citizens. But the glory of 
your virtues will not terminate with your military 
command ; it will continue to animate remotest ages. 
We feel, with you, our obligations to the army in gen- 
eral, and will particularly charge ourselves with the 
interests of those confidential officers who have at- 
tended your person to this affecting moment, 

"We join you in commending the interests of our 
dearest country to the protection of Almighty God, 
beseeching him to dispose the hearts and minds of 
its citizens to improve the opportunity afforded them 
of becoming a happy and respectable nation. And 
for you we address to him our earnest prayers, that 
a life so beloved may be fostered with all his care; 
that your days may be happy as they have been illus- 



PEACE— SURRENDER OF HIS COMMISSION. 281 

trious; and that he will finally give you the reward 
which this world can not give." 

The Secretary then delivered a copy of the Presi- 
dent's address to the general, who then took his 
leave. When he rose to deliver his address, and 
also when he retired, he bowed to the Congress, 
which they returned by uncovering without bowifig. 
He left Annapolis at sunrise the next morning, and 
reached Mount Vernon the same night — Christmas 
eve. As he wrote George Clinton : " The scene is at 
last closed. I feel myself eased of a load of public 
care. I hope to spend the remainder of my days in 
cultivating the affections of good men, and in the 
practice of the domestic virtues." This is the last 
scene in the life of George Washington, soldier, by 
his own fireside, with his wife and friends, at home 
at Mount Vernon, in Virginia. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

THE UNION AND THE CONSTITUTION. 

When George Washington rose at Mount Vernon 
on Christmas day, 1783, it is not an exaggeration to 
say that he was the most illustrious man then living 
in the world. His prudence, persistence, courage, 
wisdom, and patriotism had carried an infant state 
through a long war with the greatest nation of mod- 
ern history to a successful and glorious conclusion. 
His dominating influence in the result was thorough- 
ly understood and appreciated in Great Britain ; his 
wisdom and self-denying patriotism were intensely 
admired in France, where the ideas of the universal 
brotherhood of man were just germinating; and the 
breadth of his military combinations, and the force 
and vigor with which they had been executed, were 
admired in the new military nation of Prussia more 
than those of any modern soldier except their own 
great founder. So that, in Great Britain, France, 
and Germany, George Washington occupied the 
most conspicuous place before all men, and was first 
in honor, first in reverence, and first in love of all 
living men. 

The action, unparalleled in ancient or modern 
times, of the successful leader of a revolt against 
constituted authority, in which organized govern- 
ment had been overthrown and a new order estab- 



THE UNION AND THE CONSTITUTION. 283 

lished — who had voluntarily laid down his authority, 
severed his connection with public affairs, and re- 
tired to private life — this conduct produced a more 
profound impression on the world than even the 
military genius which had directed the war, and the 
wisdom which had controlled the people through the 
long ordeal. No one anywhere expected any such 
event except the men who had known Washington 
closely — his friends, kinsmen, and neighbors in Vir- 
ginia, some mtimate correspondents, like Jonathan 
Trumbull, of Connecticut and Thomas Johnson, of 
Maryland, and his comrades in arms, Nathaniel 
Greene, Henry Knox, Anthony Wayne, James Mc- 
Henry, John Laurens, Daniel Morgan, and true men 
like these whose view was never distorted by envy, 
ambition, or malice. 

The Continental Congress passed an unhappy 
time from the capitulation of Cornwallis to the de- 
finitive treaty of peace. It was plain what position 
Washington and the army were to occupy. They 
were to stand first in the respect and the affections 
of the people and of posterity. But what was the 
place to be assigned to the statesmen ? Like all 
weak people, they had suffered from a constant 
terror of the man on horseback. They listened for 
the knock of the dictator every day at Carpenters' 
Hall, and when the Pennsylvania militia surrounded 
them and gave them thirty minutes to gratify their 
demands, the Congress thought the hour had struck. 

The disbandment of the army during the year 
was an immense relief, and when the general at- 
tended at Annapolis as their servant, and in the posi- 
tion of subordinate had surrendered his commission, 
and all authority of every kind derived from office, 



284 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

to those who had conferred it on him, he removed 
the weight of apprehension which covered and threat- 
ened them. When, therefore, he arrived at Mount 
Vernon he was the most illustrious .man in the 
world — the best -beloved citizen, and the idolized 
hero of a generous, a chivalric, and a sentimental 
people. Not one human being lived who could or 
would say, think, or feel any evil of him— not one 
anywhere in the wide world. 

Washington actually persuaded himself that he 
wanted to end his career in the life of a private gen- 
tleman with his family and friends, and, like all men 
who have long carried a great burden of official re- 
sponsibility, believed that he could relieve himself of 
the responsibility by divesting himself of office. But 
office may be laid aside — conscience, the sense of 
duty, never can be ; and as soon as Washington had 
leisure to look around him and appreciate the situa- 
tion of things, it was clear to him that duty called 
him as imperiously now as when he left Mount 
Vernon to go to the Congress in i774-'75, and to 
the army near Boston in June, 1775. 

Washington was fifty-one years of age, in superb 
health, happy in fortune, friends, and family as few 
men have ever been. Thirty-three years of his life 
had been passed in the public service, and it was ut- 
terly impossible for him to step aside and let events 
take their course or other men control them. No 
living man knew as well what was necessary to be 
done. Not one could show as well how to do it, nor 
conduce to the doing of it, as he could. He had 
struggled through eight years, bearing on his shoul- 
ders the responsibility of the revolt, with absolutely 
no assistance from the confederated colonies. They 



THE UNION AND THE CONSTITUTION. 285 

had no government, no vigor, no life, no credit; 
they could do nothing, and did nothing. 

They had united upon terms of an alliance they 
called the " Articles of Confederation," by which 
they agreed to assist each other in the war, as re- 
quired by a vote of the Congress, each colony cast- 
ing an equal vote. This Confederation was only an 
agreement to agree. It bound no one to action ; 
it never collected a dollar of taxes, nor raised a 
soldier, except two battalions of volunteers from 
Canada, who were mustered into the American serv- 
ice as " Congress's Own." 

The States were divided from each other by 
social, religious, political, and race differences. From 
the first settlement, grave disputes had existed be- 
tween the adventurers and proprietors who were 
staking their lives and fortunes on English coloniza- 
tion in America. The Virginia companies, prior in 
time, were prior in right, and acquired by grant from 
the Crown the larger part of the North American 
continent subsequently planted by the English. 
The vacation of their charters subsequently threw 
all their territory into the control of the Crown 
which granted it, to Calvert, to Culepeper, to Penn, 
to Jersey, and various other royal favorites. But 
though the courts could vacate charters, and abolish 
grants, they could not extinguish claims or ideas 
of rights, created in various individuals by ambition 
or aspiration. 

Gentlemen and merchants had subscribed to the 
Virginia Company, and had adventured lives and 
fortunes to subdue the empire which it controlled, 
and of which they were part owners ; and when the 
fiat of the Court of King's Bench extinguished all 



286 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

charter rights, the original partners in the enter- 
prise to settle the Dominion of Virginia felt grossly 
wronged by seeing their property divided out among 
others. They never abandoned their claim to the 
original boundaries of the Dominion until the Do- 
minion became a republican State, and in so doing 
recognized the existence of other free and equal 
States erected in her territory north and south of 
her. But in recognizing the existence and the right 
to exist of Maryland and North Carolina, Virginia 
still held on to her claim to the Western territory. 

The County of Illinois, in Virginia, included the 
whole country west of the Ohio, east of the Missis- 
sippi, and south of the lakes. The County of Ken- 
tucky comprised the country south of the Ohio and 
east of the Mississippi. The Dominion during the 
Revolution consisted of the present States of Vir- 
ginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Illi- 
nois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota ; 
and when the States were asked to come into the 
Confederation, the coming in was a tacit acknowl- 
edgment of the claim of Virginia to this whole 
territory. Maryland refused to concede this, and 
held on with curious tenacity to her claim of the 
whole Potomac as her southern boundary, and her 
right to share in the great territory beyond the Mis- 
sissippi, and she went through the Revolution, repre- 
sented in Congress, and contributing her full quota 
to the armed contest, without ever having been a 
member of the Confederation. 

It was not until March, 1781, after Virginia had 
executed in due form a deed of release to the United 
States of all her claims to the Western lands, to be 
held for the common benefit of all the States, that 



THE UNION AND THE CONSTITUTION. 287 

Maryland authorized her representatives in Congress 
to commit the State to the fortunes of the confeder- 
acy by signing the Articles of Confederation. New 
York claimed Vermont, and a bitter controversy ex- 
isted between New Jersey, with Pennsylvania on the 
one side and New York on the other, about rights of 
navigation and of fishery. Virginia and Maryland 
were in a constant wrangle as to jurisdiction over 
the Chesapeake and the Potomac. 

The first problem to be solved was the construc- 
tion of a more perfect Union. Washington, with a 
political sagacity that was pure intuition, saw at once 
the point on which the power was to rest. He had 
read as little history as most gentlemen of his station 
and generation, and was as little informed as any one 
of the struggles that races, peoples, and nations have 
made at various epochs in different climates and en- 
vironments to acquire, to preserve, and to transmit 
liberty to their posterities. 

If the States were to remain discordant and un- 
sympathetic, they would become the prey of dema- 
gogues at home, who would without delay transfer 
them to some foreign power. Spain would have no 
difficulty in extending her power along the Gulf of 
Mexico, until that would become a Spanish sea; and 
France would as easily extend herself up the Missis- 
sippi and Ohio and along the lakes, until she would 
have been re-established in that position from which 
George Washington and the Virginians had spent 
their youth to expel her. 

Washington had gone into the war with a bitter 
feeling toward the French and the Papists, and a sen- 
timent of regretful affection for the mother country ; 
he had come out of it with a warm affection for the 



288 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

French and the Catholics — for the French had proved 
friends in need, and the Catholics, native and foreign 
born, had been ardent patriots — and with an intense 
hostility to the English Government and its adher- 
ents, the Tories in America. He loved and respected 
the Fairfaxes — loyal gentlemen, who grieved over his 
fall and prayed for his restoration to the ways of 
duty, of honor, and of patriotism. He conceded to 
them the right of private judgment, but to them 
alone. The many distinguished Virginian families 
who adhered to their oaths of allegiance and refused 
to rebel against " the best government the world 
ever saw," he never, to his dying day, forgave or 
forgot ; and after the war was over, while Mount 
Vernon was open to all the world who came to pay 
their respects to the master, no Tory, or son of a 
Tory, ever broke bread there. Every man who had 
stood by the flag on land or sea was welcome ; any 
man who had fought it in open, manly, honorable 
war was welcome; but no one who had deserted 
friends, and joined with negroes and Indians in 
servile and savage war, ever again touched the hand 
of George Washington. 

Something has been said — more may be — from 
the side of those who, faithful to their hereditary 
allegiance, staked and lost all save honor in the de- 
fense of the union with the old mother ; but the 
generation which fought the rebellion, which accom- 
plished disunion, and which established independ- 
ence, never made allowances for their unsuccessful 
neighbors, but regarded them with unmitigated con- 
tempt and undying hate to the end of their lives. 
And Washington was a man of his time. 

To bring the Western lands in connection with the 



THE UNION AND THE CONSTITUTION. 289 

East was the first step in the problem of the Union. 
He never saw the Great Lakes, but he saw the future, 
and he marked out a way by which a free highway by 
water might be constructed from the Chesapeake to 
Detroit. And by Detroit now passes annually a ton- 
nage greater than the entire transoceanic trade of 
the United States. He had originated this enter- 
prise long before, and in 1762 had held a conference 
at Fredericktown, in Maryland, with Thomas John- 
son, George Mason, and other associates in the Ohio 
Company, for the purpose of devising means to open 
the Western lands. In a letter to Johnson, in 1772, 
he presses the subject; and he secured a charter, in 
1774, from the Virginia Legislature for a transporta- 
tion company on the Potomac. Washington failed 
to secure the co-operation of Maryland, and the war 
stopped the undertaking. 

Before he retired from the army, in the summer of 
1783, he rode with Governor Clinton, of New York, 
up the valley of the Mohawk and reconnoitered the 
line of water way to the lakes, which Clinton's son 
afterward made the route for the Erie Canal. In the 
autumn of 1784, accompanied by one servant, he rode 
from Mount Vernon to Winchester, to Wills' Creek, to 
the Monongahela, to Fort Pitt, and down the Ohio to 
the Kanawha, to the New River and across the Blue 
Mountains to the head waters of the James at Clifton 
Forge ; thence along the Piedmont road to Mount 
Vernon. This extraordinary expedition was made 
primarily for the purpose of acquiring personal 
knowledge of the country, in which he had large in- 
vestments in land, but also for the purpose of ascer- 
taining the best way of connecting the East and the 
West. With the wonderful political sagacity which he 



290 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



at times exhibited like inspiration, he was not in favor 
of acquiring control of the Mississippi " at that time." 
Free navigation of the Mississippi could draw the 
trade of its great watershed to the Gulf of Mexico 
and so establish the Spaniards there forever. Wash- 
ington/.?// the impulse of "manifest destiny." He 
knew that the great country of the West would 
be filled by an energetic, intellectual, courageous, 
liberty-loving people ; their appearance might be 
delayed; the British, by holding on to the Western 
posts, in violation of the treaty and their plighted 
faith, might for a few years keep the Indian tribes in 
a condition of suppressed excitement, ready at any 
moment to break out into flagrant war, and thus 
hinder and delay immigration and settlement; but 
civilization was bound, by the inevitable law of 
progress of the human race, to occupy and develop 
the immense resources which might be made to con- 
tribute so immensely to the comfort and happiness 
of man. It is not probable that Washington ever 
heard of Evolution or Progress ; but he knew that 
hickory and walnut timber indicated rich land — land 
that would produce corn, wheat, rye, and oats in pro- 
fusion ; and he knew that wherever there was rich 
land the pioneer would find it and take it and pos- 
sess it and cultivate it. He would make " home " 
there, and wherever the Norman-Anglo-Saxon had 
established his household altars, from that place he 
never receded. The rich bottoms and heavy timber 
of the Ohio and the Kanawha all pointed to future 
empire, and the soul of the politician-statesman was 
filled with visions and hopes of the future of such a 
country bound to the Atlantic and dominated by 
the liberty-loving, freeborn race that for a thousand 



THE UNION AND THE CONSTITUTION. 29 1 

years had been engaged in one constant struggle 
for liberty and justice and right. As soon as Wash- 
ington arrived at Mount Vernon he set to work with 
that patient pertinacity which above all others was 
his distinguishing characteristic. 

He wrote to Madison, then attending the Congress 
at Annapolis, urging him to bring up in the Maryland 
Legislature, in session at the same place, the ques- 
tion of some arrangement between Maryland and 
Virginia about jurisdiction over and the navigation 
of the Chesapeake. Under the public law, as it then 
stood, the nation controlling the mouth of a river had 
the right to regulate and tax the access to the high 
sea of all the inhabitants of its upper waters. It 
was not until the Treaty of Vienna that the com- 
mercial navigation of rivers which separate States 
was declared to be entirely free in their whole course. 
This made the Rhine and its confluents free. Similar 
regulations as to the Elbe were made by the Treaty 
of Dresden in 182 1, and of the Vistula and Po in 
1815, and of the Danube by the Treaty of Paris in 
1850. The English secured the right of navigation 
of the Mississippi by the Treaty of 1763 with France, 
and the right was secured to the English and Amer- 
icans by the Treaty of 1783. 

Therefore, when the Treaty of 1783 acknowledged 
and recognized thirteen sovereign and independent 
States, each State had absolute control of all navi- 
gable waters within its limits. Connecticut controlled 
the Connecticut River ; New Jersey and Delaware, 
the Delaware; Virginia, the lower Chesapeake; and 
thus Maryland and Pennsylvania might both be cut 
off from the viai^e libermn^ the free highway of com- 
merce of the nations of the world. An agreement 
20 



292 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



between the States was thus absolutely necessary to 
secure proper commercial facilities to them, and 
Washington proposed to use the necessities of the 
situation to promote the grand object he had in 
view — to wit, the foundation of a solid Union, by 
binding the East and boundless West by the ties of 
mutual interest. 

While the Maryland Legislature, at his instance, 
was initiating negotiations with Virginia as to the 
jurisdiction over and navigation of the Potomac and 
the Chesapeake, he pressed the Virginia Legislature 
to grant a charter to the Potomac Company— the 
enterprise which he had started in 1762, and only 
gave up when he went to Congress in 1774. He was 
made president of the company, which was to con- 
struct a slack water navigation from Rock Creek, 
the head of tide, to Wills' Creek, and then a series of 
smaller canals and dams across the mountain to the 
Monongahela, and so bind the East and West, by the 
ties of interest, into a Union which should last for- 
ever. But the fundamental idea in the undertaking 
was that the navigable line proposed to be created 
should be a free highway forever to all the people of 
the United States. 

While the Legislature of Virginia was thus pro- 
viding for making the Potomac a free highway, that 
of Maryland appointed commissioners to meet those 
from Virginia, to settle the jurisdiction and naviga- 
tion of the Potomac and the Chesapeake. Annapolis 
is within visiting distance of Mount Vernon. It was 
then within a good day's ride. The general would 
send a servant on a horse to Governor Johnson or 
Colonel Tilghman or Colonel Howard, requesting 
the pleasure of their company to dinner the next 



THE UNION AND THE CONSTITUTION. 293 

day, to meet some comrade of Germantown or York- 
town, or some foreign officers visiting Mount Ver- 
non, and by sunrise the following morning the caval- 
cade would be en route to Mount Vernon for a three 
o'clock dinner. Such intimate relations increased his 
influence among the Marylanders, who were already 
devoted to him. He pressed the Potomac Company 
and the question of navigation of the Chesapeake 
first on the Virginians who were farther off, and then 
on the Marylanders right at his hand. The Virgin- 
ians chartered the Potomac Company. The Mary- 
landers appointed Thomas Johnson, Thomas Stone, 
Samuel Chase, and Daniel, of St. Thomas, Jenifer, 
to meet commissioners from Virginia to settle the 
navigation and jurisdiction question. Virginia then 
appointed Edmund Randolph, George Mason, James 
Madison, Jr., and Alexander Henderson, to meet the 
Maryland Commissioners, and Maryland then re- 
enacted the charter of the Potomac Company. 

Washington's first move was successful. He had 
secured the consent and guarantee of Virginia and 
Maryland that the navigation of the upper Potomac 
should be free forever, and that the great West should 
have a free access to tide. But that gave them no 
access to the ocean. So, when the commissioners of 
the two States met at Alexandria, in January, 1785, 
the general met them, and adjourned the whole mat- 
ter and meeting and negotiations to Mount Vernon. 
The agreement then made was thoroughly imbued 
with the ideas of Washington. It gave Maryland- 
ers and Virginians equal rights in the Pocomoke, 
the Potomac, and the Chesapeake, and made these 
waters free highways to the open sea. The Com- 
pact of 1785, as it is called, was the germ of the 



; 



294 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



Constitution of 1789, and it came from the brain 
and heart of Washington. It forbade Maryland or 
Virginia making any regulations of commerce as 
between their respective ports or over their re- 
spective waters which would interfere with the equal 
rights of citizens of the two States. It declared that 
the flag covered the cargo, and that the citizens of 
each State should have the right to be tried for all 
crimes and offenses committed on the waters of the 
Pocomoke, the Potomac, and the Chesapeake, by the 
courts of the State of which he was a citizen. It 
made the records of judicial proceedings in one State 
evidence in the other, and it provided for the acces- 
sion of Pennsylvania and Delaware to it. The Arti- 
cles of Confederation distinctly prohibited the States 
from '' entering into any treaty, alliance, or confed- 
eration." The negotiations of the Compact of 1785 
distinguished between treaty, alliance, or confedera- 
tion, and the agreement between the two States, and 
they not only made the agreement between those 
two, but invited two others to unite with them in the 
agreement. The compact was promptly ratified by 
each State, and forms the law of each State to-day. 

The consultations at Mount Vernon disclosed the 
identity of opinions between those present as to the 
evil and the remedy and the crying necessity for 
prompt action. The Articles of Confederation were 
worse than useless. The very compact they were ar- 
ranging was a nullification of its plain provisions, 
while the one which they proposed, if accepted, 
would result in the subversion of the entire confed- 
eration. It was plain that if Delaware and Pennsyl- 
/ vania came into the compact of 1785 and thus se- 
cured free trade among themselves, then the other 



THE UNION AND THE CONSTITUTION. 295 

States would hasten to clamor for admission to its 
benefits. Madison caused to be passed by the Vir- 
ginia Legislature a resolution, calling on the States 
to meet in convention in Annapolis in 1786 to revise 
the Articles of Confederation. That convention was 
only attended by four of the States, and it issued an- 
other call for them all to send delegates to another 
convention of revision to meet at Philadelphia dur- 
ing the next year. 

Virginia promptly selected Washington to head 
her delegation to that meeting, and associated with 
him Randolph, Madison, and Mason — three of the 
Mount Vernon negotiators — and the consultations 
for Union were transferred from Mount Vernon to 
Philadelphia, and the negotiations for it from two 
States to thirteen. On the meeting of the conven- 
tion Washington was made president, and, although 
there is no record of his active participation in its de- 
bates, there is no doubt that his influence was potent 
in directing its action. 

From the day he assumed command of the army 
at Cambridge he had suffered from the impotence of 
the Confederation. His practical mind understood 
that leagues and alliances between States can never 
withstand concentrated powers moving against them 
from the outside, and that dissension and difference 
in interest and sentiment will always produce feeble- 
ness in council and inefficiency in execution among 
themselves. From the beginning of the movement 
at Mount Vernon he was not anxious for any action 
at all as to the Articles of Confederation. The time 
had not come and opinion was not ripe for their total 
abrogation, and he wished no half-way measures. 
He wanted ^governments not influence; for, as he said 



296 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

about the Shay rebellion in Massachusetts, " influence 
i s n o t govern?nent. ' ' 

The Confederation was an advisory body, where 
each party did as they pleased, and were constrained 
by no authority save their own sense of right. Wash- 
ington knew that the Union, which he considered the 
great guarantee of public liberty and individual hap- 
piness and prosperity, required a concrete govern- 
ment, a law-making power to make laws, a judicial 
power to construe them, and an executive to admin- 
ister them. He and Randolph arrived at the con- 
clusion, early in the discussion, that the laws must be 
made by the people, for the people, and be applied 
to the people. No scheme would operate or last 
which looked to coercing States; that would lead to 
war, and the idea of coercion of States was fatal to 
Union and destructive to liberty. 

But they believed that a government might be 
constructed that, passing by the State governments, 
would directly represent the citizens, and would op- 
erate on the citizens. They had no conception of the 
idea of a citizenship of the United States apart from 
the citizenship of the State, but they believed that, 
securing and preserving the autonomy of States, they 
would thereby secure the highest guarantee for the 
perpetuation of the Union, the Union being con- 
structed of a number of States whose citizens became 
citizens of the Union and on whom the Union oper- 
ated directly. 

With infinite labor, patience, perseverance, and 
courage, Washington labored in support of the "Vir- 
ginia plan " introduced in the convention by Mr. Ran- 
dolph for the new government, and all his influence 
was exerted toward the creation of a government to 



THE UNION AND THE CONSTITUTION. 



297 



Operate on individuals and not on States. George 
Mason separated from liis associate negotiators of 
the Compact of 1785, and resolutely opposed any plan 
to create a government with centralized power. The 
idea of a government that governs prevailed over 
that of one that advises, and the Constitution of the 
United States was adopted by the convention, and 
sent to the States for ratification. Then began the 
greatest, most pregnant labor of Washington's life. 
If it can be said " he was the Revolution," it is be- 
yond doubt equally true that " he was the Constitu- 
tion and the Union." 

From the day the convention adjourned at Phila- 
delphia until the ratification by the ninth State ful- 
filled the terms upon which the Constitution was to be 
put into operation, his correspondence was incessant, 
copious, all-pervading. He wrote to gentlemen in 
different States that they must become members of 
their State conventions to which the Constitution 
was to be submitted for ratification. He substantially 
appointed the Convention of Maryland, for he se- 
lected the leading members of it. He wrote Johnson 
that the Constitution ought to be ratified at once, 
without conditions or amendments. He was not sat- 
isfied with it, and some features of it he probably 
never would assent to, but it was the best that could 
be done, and the only present means of preserving 
peace and the Union. The action of New York and 
Massachusetts was very uncertain, Rhode Island 
and North Carolina had promptly rejected it. New 
Hampshire was hanging back, and if the vote of 
Virginia was to be permitted to be the casting vote, 
the vanity of that State, he wrote, would be so much 
inflamed that her action would be very doubtful. If, 



298 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



however, Maryland promptly accepted the new form 
of government, this would place its ratification by 
nine States beyond doubt, and render the position 
of Virginia of little consequence. The situation 
would ultimately decide her to join the Union. It 
would be a necessity. The Maryland Convention, 
accepting the orders from Mount Vernon, ratified the 
Constitution, and adjourned while a committee to 
consider amendments, raised on motion of William 
Paca, was out, and that committee of the last cen- 
tury has not reported to this day. 

When the Constitution was accepted by eleven 
States, its author and creator of necessity became 
its director, and was selected, by the unanimous vote 
of all the States and the unanimous wish of all the 
people, to put it in operation. He secured the elec- 
tion in the different States of men selected by him, 
known to him, and esteemed by him, to constitute 
the first Congress. He had great doubts about the 
success of the experiment, but he was determined 
that he would give every energy of mind, heart, and 
body to insure it. He was convinced that the para- 
mount, overreaching, all-pervading duty of patriot- 
ism was to secure a perpetual union of all the 
States. He was convinced that the first step toward 
that, beyond government or administration, above 
mere constitutional arrangements, was to secure the 
valley of the Ohio to the seaboard by proper com- 
mercial connections. Hence the Potomac and the 
James River Companies and the Compact of 1785. 

With this territory, bound together by social and 
material ties, he believed a State would be founded 
which would eventually include the Great Lakes, the 
Mississippi, and the islands of the W^est Indies, and 



THE UNION AND THE CONSTITUTION. 



299 



he foresaw the time when the Gulf of Mexico would 
become an American sea, dominated by the arts and 
the arms, the intelligence and the valor of the Union, y 
The key of Washington's whole conduct for the rest 
of his life will be found in this deep faith of his in 
the manifest destiny of the Union. 

There was a great deal of human nature in him, 
and he resented the conduct of the British Govern- 
ment toward the Americans during the war. Theories 
about taxation without representation, and trials 
without juries, did not affect his mind so much; but 
he felt bitterly to the day of his death — as did all the 
men of that time — the hiring of the Hessians to rav- 
age and destroy, and the inciting of the Indians to 
all the horrors of savage warfare. He insisted on his 
Americanism — that the American, in courage, in intel- 
lect, in force and vigor, in regard for justice and right 
and reverence for truth, was the equal of any race 
that ever lived, and he repudiated for himself, his 
compatriots, and his country, that provincialism 
which looks to other social conditions for standards y 
for morals or other political systems for ideas and 
models. He believed that the American was to de- 
velop a new race and a new civilization, which for 
power, for energy, for virtue, and for valor has never 
been equaled in this world. For this reason he laid 
down the broad principle, ever since received by the 
Republic, that America never would enter into the 
politics of Europe nor be bound by entangling alli- 
ances with it. This doctrine was afterward applied 
by Mr. Monroe to mean that, as America took no 
part in the disputes of Europe, Europe should not 
acquire interests in America, so as to embroil herself 
in American interests. 



300 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



And it seems as if the doctrine of nonintervention 
was to apply not only to the two American continents 
and the Atlantic islands on the American coast, but 
as well to the archipelagoes of the Pacific. By the 
Treaty of Peace the British were to deliver posses- 
sion of the posts in the Northwest to the Americans. 
They did not do so, and during President Washing- 
ton's first term he was constantly harassed by the 
apprehension that they would stir up the savages 
against the outlying settlements in the vast counties 
of Illinois and Kentucky. 

As the French Revolution developed he never 
was sanguine that any great good would result from 
the destruction of institutions which were the growth 
of centuries. He saw the suffering that would surely 
ensue; the benefits that were to grow out of it he 
failed to appreciate. He organized his government 
with Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State; Alexan- 
der Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury ; Henry 
Knox, Secretary of War, and Edmund Randolph, At- 
torney General. Hamilton and Randolph had served 
on his staff, and Knox had been known and trusted 
since the camp at Cambridge. Jefferson was the 
only one who had not been a soldier and a comrade. 
He had been American minister to France, where he 
had fraternized with that Revolution, and adopted 
some of the most extreme ideas of the French phi- 
losophy of human rights. 

On the breaking out of the war in Europe the 
sympathies of the Americans naturally crystallized 
around France, and the French Revolutionary Gov- 
ernment claimed the assistance of the United States 
against Great Britain as guaranteed by the Treaty 
of Alliance. Washington loved Lafayette, he liked 






THE UNION AND THE CONSTITUTION. 301 

De Rochambeau and De Grasse, and many French 
comrades of the war, but he never did admire French 
ways ; their demonstrativeness, their effusion, were 
offensive to him; and while he was anxious to fulfill 
all the obligations of public faith, he was equally 
anxious to afford the Americans opportunity to build 
up their enormous country and develop their great 
destiny by the arts of peace. 

The Union was his highest aspiration, and peace 
and neutrality had become necessary to the Union. 
Hamilton gave as his opinion that the other party to 
the Treaty of Alliance 'having ceased to exist, its 
successor — the Revolutionary Government— could 
not claim the benefit of its treaties. Jefferson 
claimed that the treaty was made with the French 
nation, which lives forever, and therefore the treaty 
bound the American succession to the Confederation, 
as well as the French Republic succeeding the mon- 
archy. AVashington decided with Hamilton— proper- 
ly decided, but on the wrong ground. Treaties are 
not modified by changes in the form of government of 
the contracting parties, but continue in force as long 
as the contractors choose to perform their obliga- 
tions. But for that very reason there can be no per- 
petual treaty. No Government can bind the future 
forever, and the same right to change forms of gov- 
ernment, of which each nation must, of course, be 
the sole judge for itself, must reserve to each party 
the right to release itself from the obligations of any 
treaty upon fair notice. 

The United States preserved their neutrality. 
The first duty presented to the new Government was 
that of creating public credit and public revenue. 
Hamilton, in a report unequaled in any language in 



302 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



any age of the world for grasp of conditions, for 
appreciation of principles, for vigor of intellect, pro- 
posed as the first step toward rehabilitation of credit, 
that the Union should assume all the debts of all the 
States created in the course of the war in the com- 
mon enterprise. Washington understood that such 
a measure would draw large and powerful interests 
to the support of a government on maintenance of 
which their property depended, and he urged the 
measure with all his influence. It was adopted as 
part of a compromise by which the site of the Fed- 
eral city was finally fixed on the Potomac River, at 
the mouth of Rock Creek. 

The revenue measure was unfortunately con- 
ceived. It levied a tax on distilled spirits in the 
hands of the manufacturer. Hamilton was neither 
an Englishman nor an American. He was West In- 
dian by birth, and he knew nothing by observation of 
the deep-seated aversion people have for tax-gather- 
ers spying about their houses. But theoretically a 
tax on spirits was an ideal tax. It taxed a luxury; 
no one need pay it unless he chose to use spirits, and 
it would be cheaply and easily collected. These the- 
oretical views did not turn out to be practical. The 
mountaineers from Fort Pitt to King's Mountain 
flew to arms and drove the Federal tax-gatherers 
from their borders. 

In 1785 there had been an insurrection against 
the State authorities of Massachusetts, led by one 
Shay, and Washington had been urgent upon the 
Governor that it was of the greatest importance 
that the power of Government should be promptly 
exhibited, and the rising suppressed without a mo- 
ment's delay and by the strong hand. " We must 



THE UNION AND THE CONSTITUTION. 303 

show to the world," said he, "that we have 2^ govern- 
meiit which will govern, and not advised As soon as 
he was assured that rebellion against the Union had 
arisen in Pennsylvania, he made Congress pass a law 
authorizing him to call out the militia to suppress 
any insurrection anywhere ; and he issued his procla- 
mation calling out the militia of New Jersey, Penn- 
sylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, and appointed 
Light Horse Harry, Governor Lee, of Virginia, to 
command them. 

The States furnished fifteen thousand troops, and 
Washington accompanied them as far as Bedford, in 
Pennsylvania. Lee moved farther west, but the in- 
surrection dispersed. Some of the leaders were ar- 
rested and tried by the Federal Court at Philadel- 
phia and convicted of treason, and v/ere pardoned 
by the President. The necessary lesson that there 
was a government which could and would govern 
had been taught. 

By one of the curious antitheses of history, the 
only other time the power of the President to call 
out the militia to suppress rebellion was exercised, 
was when it was invoked to suppress rebellion led 
by the Governor of Virginia and the son of Light 
Horse Harry Lee. Washington assumed control of 
the Government impressed with the idea that better 
government could be obtained by ignoring those dif- 
ferences of opinion that must exist in free societies, 
and the organizations that of necessity arise to en- 
force policies. The great difference that had arisen 
before the Constitutional Convention was whether 
or not the Articles of Confederation should be re- 
vised or a new government formed; and in the con- 
vention itself, whether the new government to be or- 



304 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



ganized should be founded on States or on the people. 
Hamilton and Edmund Randolph favored a consoli- 
dated government, with great powers to operate di- 
rectly on the people ; William Patterson, of New 
Jersey, and Patrick Henry advocated a government 
representing sovereign States, of whom the Federal 
agent should be the representative, and connected 
with the people only through the States. The Con- 
stitution was a compromise between the two theories, 
but was more largely impressed with the ideas of 
Randolph than those of Patterson. It was a Vir- 
ginian victory, to be, in the future, the source of un- 
numbered woes to her. 

The new Government was organized on the prin- 
ciple of ignoring these radical differences. Hamil- 
ton was placed at the head of finance, and Randolph 
made supervisor of the administration of the laws, 
while Jefferson, just returned from France, where he 
had signalized himself as the ardent sympathizer 
with the radical democracy of the Revolution, was 
charged with the conduct of foreign affairs and ex- 
terior relations. It required the experience of four 
years to convince the President that popular govern- 
ment can only be carried on by means of parties — 
organizations of citizens who agree in desiring that 
certain things shall be done and certain policies be 
applied to public affairs, and who agree to join to- 
gether in united effort to secure the objects of their 
desires. Mr. Jefferson, the radical Democrat, did 
not agree on any single principle with Mr. Hamilton, 
the conservative Republican. The one believed that 
mankind had sufficient virtue, intelligence, and self- 
control to organize society so as to secure the largest 
happiness to the great body of the citizenship. 



THE UNION AND THE CONSTITUTION. 



305 



Col. Hamilton, referring to the history of the 
English race and the experience of mankind, be- 
lieved that liberty and happiness could only be ob- 
tained and retained by constant struggle against the 
selfishness of human nature; that the strong would 
oppress the weak, the wise would take advantage of 
the simple, unless they were restrained by the whole 
of society acting through a strong government. Mr. 
Jefferson believed that the less government there 
was, the better for the happiness, the liberty, and 
the security of the people. Mr. Hamilton was con- 
vinced that happiness, liberty, and security would 
all be lost unless preserved by a powerful govern- 
m.ent; that reliance upon the virtue and patriotism 
and unselfishness of individuals to protect the weak 
and preserve their rights would be found by experi- 
ence to be futile, and that selfishness would prove 
to be the radical motive of general human action. 
Such opinions of necessity produced clashing acts. 
The advocates of Union gathered around Hamilton, 
and he selected all his agents in administering his 
great office from among them. Jefferson selected peo- 
ple who sympathized with him to carry out his plans 
and to advocate his ideas and to expound his demo- 
cratic principles. 

Washington, after a worrying experience, became 
convinced that his preconceived idea that govern- 
ment could be administered on nonpartisan lines by 
nonpartisans was radically wrong; and he became 
equally well satisfied that to carry on a government 
for free people, its conduct must accord with their V' 
opinions and sympathize with their sentiments; that 
a government of opinion must be operated along the 
line of that opinion, and this required that every 



3o6 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



agent, from President to tide waiter, must sympathize 
with and earnestly support that opinion. The idea 
that a government of opinion could or would be suc- 
cessfully conducted by agents, principals, or subor- 
dinates opposed to such opinion and hostile to its 
development, was effectually refuted in President 
Washington's mind. 

Early in 1793 war was declared between Great 
Britain and France. After mature consideration by 
the Cabinet, the policy of neutrality was determined 
upon, and Randolph drafted the proclamation which 
has been the model for precise statement and the 
basis of the policy of neutrality which has been prac- 
ticed by the United States ever since, and which has 
as much as any one thing contributed to the enfran- 
chisement, the development, and the perpetuity of 
the Union of the States. Directly after the procla- 
mation of neutrality Genet landed at Charleston as 
minister from the Revolutionary Government of 
France to the United States of America. The Gallic 
temperament is never inclined to minimize its own 
importance or to diminish the value of the achieve- 
ments of its people. In the great gallery of pictures 
of French exploits at St. Cloud is a conspicuous 
representation of the surrender of a British army 
under Lord Cornwallis to a French one under the 
General Count de Rochambeau and Admiral Count 
de Grasse, at Yorktown, in America ; and at that 
period among the French the American Revolution 
v/as regarded as an achievement of French states- 
manship executed by French arms. 

The part played by the Americans was regarded 
as merely subsidiary and insignificant. As the Brit- 
ish had Indian allies, so the French had American 



THE UNION AND THE CONSTITUTION. 



307 



auxiliaries, only differing from the other in degrees 
of barbarism. Of course, among French officers, the 
aristocracy, and the educated classes generally, a 
clearer appreciation of the conditions obtained ; but 
the French democracy believed that America was 
the creation and should be the creature of France. 
Mr. Genet, therefore, upon landing, assumed the part 
of a Roman proconsul taking possession of a con- 
quered province, or a British political agent advising 
an Indian rajah. He began at once to equip ves- 
sels, arm them, man them, and send them out with 
letters of marque to attack British commerce on the 
high seas. He authorized and ordered all French 
consuls in American ports to sit as courts of admi- 
ralty and to adjudicate all questions of prize of war. 

The general American feeling was partial to 
France and bitter against England, and Genet's 
measures and movements were hailed with enthusi- 
asm wherever he went in the Southern country. His 
route was a triumphal march from Charleston to 
Philadelphia. His letters of marque began to bring 
in prizes to Charleston and to Norfolk, and there 
was profit as well as glory and danger in attacking 
the British under the French flag. Privateers multi- 
plied, and in a few months would swarm the seas. 
Genet brought an English prize, the Little Sarah, to 
Philadelphia, where he proceeded to fit her out as 
a fighting ship. Mifflin, ex-quartermaster general 
and ex-President of the Board of War of the Con- 
federacy, was then Governor of Pennsylvania, and 
in concert with Alexander Hamilton took appropriate 
steps to arrest the vessel and prevent the infraction 
of the proclamation. 

Jefferson, alarmed for his friends, the French, 



3o8 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



applied to Genet to stop his illegal proceedings. 
Genet frankly declined to engage that the vessel 
should not sail, but stated that she would not be 
ready before Wednesday. Upon this statement 
Jefferson procured Mifflin's guard to be withdrawn, 
and the Little Sarah, rechristened La Petite Demo- 
crat, dropped down the river and lay in the stream 
opposite Chester. Genet then promised that the 
vessel should not sail until the President, absent at 
Mount Vernon, should decide as to the legality of 
his action. While Washington was hurrying from 
Mount Vernon, La Petite Democrat went to sea, and 
the Secretary of State went to the country. 

The affair of Genet brought matters to a crisis. 
The Secretary of State had two years before brought 
Philip Freneau, a writer, to Philadelphia, paid him 
out of the public purse as a sinecure clerk in the 
State Department, and established him in charge of 
the organ of the Jeffersonian Radical Democracy, 
the National Gazette. The propaganda of the new 
philosophy distinguished itself by a prompt attack 
on the Hamiltonian theories and the Federalists. 
Of course this led to opposition to the chief of the 
Federalists, the President, and criticism of his policy, 
his principles, his manners, and his morals. 

Curious as it seems now, the leaders of the 
Democracy pretended to believe, and taught their 
disciples to believe, during the three first presiden- 
tial terms — the two of Washington and the one of 
John Adams — that there was a deep-seated purpose 
in the minds of the Federalists to establish a mon- 
archical government in America, on the basis of the 
Federal Union, and as a preparation for this to 
introduce aristocratic customs in social life. Wash- 



THE UNION AND THE CONSTITUTION. 309 

ington always opened the Congress in person, read- 
ing his address to them from manuscript. He made 
a general rule that the President of the United States 
would return no calls nor accept social invitations. 
He set apart a day for the reception of everybody, 
gentle and simple, but he received them standing, 
and they were presented to him individually by 
name by one of his aids-de-camp. He invariably 
wore a velvet suit, silk stockings, lace ruffles, a dress 
sword, and powder. This was the custom of the 
society in which he had been reared in Fairfax, at 
Williamsburg, at Belvoir, and the way he was ac- 
customed to live at Mount Vernon. 

He had been occupying a conspicuous and respon- 
sible place — the most conspicuous and responsible 
in America — for twenty years, and position and power 
of necessity produce dignity and gravity in the 
possessor. But these simple, reasonable, and neces- 
sary social rules gave real offense to many, and were 
made the pretext of complaint by some. The clerk 
of the Secretary of State filled the National Gazette 
with complaints of the aping of regal state by his 
Excellency. Powdered hair was held up to special 
detestation as a sign of aristocracy and a mark of 
gentle birth and breeding. 

So the Democrats attended on the President's 
levees with plain hair and unpowdered heads. After 
one of these official functions, a friend found Mrs. 
Martha busily engaged going through the parlors 
with a maid and a basin, soap and towel, erasing 
from the walls the marks made by the unpowdered 
heads of the callers of the preceding evening by re- 
posing their unwigged craniums against her freshly 
whitened walls. " Why, Mrs. Washington, what in 



310 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



the name of goodness are you about?" cried the 
visitor. " Oh, those dirty Democrats ! " was the tidy 
housewife's reply, pointing to the spots made by 
Democratic polls on the walls. With such a temper 
" in kitchen and in castle hall " an issue was soon 
made. In August, 1793, the French Government 
was requested to recall Mr. Genet, who, deprived of 
his official status and relieved of his political inflam- 
mation, remained in the country, and lived and died 
a good patriotic American citizen. But the issue 
with Genet proved that Jefferson and the Democ- 
racy were not to control the policy of the country. 
Events soon demonstrated that as long as Wash- 
ington was President they were not to exert any 
influence over it. In the following year (1794) he 
sent Thomas Pinckney, of South Carolina, to Spain 
who negotiated a treaty which defined the boundaries 
of Florida, and secured to the United States the free 
navigation of the Mississippi. The termination of 
the war had left the Americans with feelings of bit- 
ter hatred, detestation, and horror toward the British 
and the Tories. The enormities of the invading 
troops engaged in suppressing the rebellion are al- 
most incredible. The British sacked the town of New 
Haven and carried off the library of Yale College, as 
they did also at Princeton and Williamsburg. 

It is recorded that ''Arnold, after his Virginia 
raid, returned to New York rich as a nabob with the 
plunder of Virginia. Phillips was now sent to make 
his fortune out of what Arnold left unplundered." 
Judge Thomas Jones, an eminent New York judge 
under the royal Government of one of the richest and 
most aristocratic families of the province who ad- 
hered to the loyal side, has left a History of New 



THE UNION AND THE CONSTITUTION. 311 

York during the Revolutionary War, which has 
been recently published. He says : " The war, in fact, 
was not levied at rebellion, but at the Treasury of 
Great Britain ; at his Majesty's loyal subjects within 
the lines; indiscriminately against all persons wherever 
the army moved ; against erudition, religion, and 
literature in general. Public libraries were robbed, 
colleges ruined, and churches of all denominations 
burned and destroyed ; while plunder, robberies, 
peculation, whoring, gaming, and all kinds of dissi- 
pations were cherished, nursed, encouraged, and 
openly countenanced." 

General Fitzpatrick, with Sir William Howe's 
army advancing to the occupation of Philadelphia, 
wrote to his sister-in-law, Lady Ossory, " from the 
Head of Elk River, Maryland, September i, 1777," 
on the advance to Brandy wine : " The scene we are 
witnesses to is the most vile and execrable that 
can be conceived. A soldier of ours was yesterday 
taken by the enemy beyond our lines, 7vho had chopped 
off an unforttmate wojnans fingers in order to plunder 
her of her rings. I really think the return of this army 
to England is to be dreaded by the peaceable inhab- 
itants, and will occasion a prodigious increase of busi- 
ness for Sir J. Fielding and Jack Ketch. I am sure 
the office of the latter can never find more deserving 
objects for its exercise." 

In addition to the native British ruffian and bru- 
tal Hessian, the Administration called to its aid the 
red savages of the wilderness, armed them, and set 
them loose. They offered and paid rewards for 
scalps without regard to age or sex ; that of the 
babe in arms was merchantable as well as that of 
feeble old age, that of the matron or maid as well 



312 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



as that of stalwart ranger or sturdy farmer. War 
is barbarism. It is the release of the fierce, bad pas- 
sions of men from the moral and physical restraint 
imposed by generations of self-control. But there 
is no law in war but the law of force. The strong- 
est do as they please ; and in a war of invasion, sup- 
pressing a rebellion, all restraints of religion, morals, 
sentiment, and right are thrown aside, and its taint 
infects everything, and must be destroyed. It was so 
in 1688, after Monmouth's rebellion ; it was so in 
1745, after Charles Edward's rising; and it was so in 
i775-'8i, and always will be so. The revival of such 
memories would be detrimental, if unnecessary ; but 
their recall is now useful to better understand the 
next episode and trial in Washington's life. 

The Treaty of Peace had bound the English to 
surrender to the United States all the military posts 
on the lakes and west of the Ohio. With a profound 
sense of the importance of the Western country to 
the prosperity, the safety, and the glory of the 
United States, Washington had urged on the Confed- 
eration the necessity of securing the fulfillment of 
this treaty engagement. But the British Government 
deferred and delayed, postponed and procrastinated, 
until Washington became President. It had never 
gone beyond acknowledging the independence of the 
several States, but had never recognized the United 
States — the Union under the Constitution. It sent 
no minister to the Union, and received none from the 
Union. Inflamed by the passion the war had cre- 
ated — for he had felt none before — Washington be- 
came satisfied that the British intended to make a 
new effort at conquest. 

It was this suspicion that was a potent force in 



THE UNION AND THE CONSTITUTION. 



313 



directing his energy, his mind, and his enthusiasm 
toward the prompt construction of a Union which 
would have concentrated power enough to resist the 
attack on liberty more vigorously than the Confed- 
eracy had been enabled to do. It was this feeling 
that prompted his first move at Mount Vernon in 
arranging the Compact of 1785, the Annapolis Con- 
vention of 1786, and that in Philadelphia in 1787. 
A speech was reported as having been made by 
Lord Dorchester at Montreal to a grand council of 
Indian chiefs, promising them that he would soon 
send them on the warpath against the Americans. 
At the same time the British Administration pub- 
lished an order m council substantially excluding 
American commerce from British West Indian ports. 
Next to the Western country and the policy of 
neutrality, and as part of the same grand system to 
build up and solidify the Union, Washington desired 
peace. Arts, industry, happy labor, would, he knew, 
construct a powerful nation, which in time would 
lead the world in arts and arms, as in virtue and 
valor, intelligence and character. He wrote Lafay- 
ette, in 1791, "We must have the free navigation of 
the Mississippi, and we surely will have it if we re- 
main a nation." Everything depended on that — 
peace, order, happiness, progress. He proposed to 
send Hamilton to England. But by this time it had 
become clear to him, that if he was to adminis- 
ter the Government on the lines of the policy he had 
marked out, he could only do it by the assistance of 
those who believed in that policy and in him. Mr. 
Jefferson had diverged so far from the President that 
both became convinced that it was wisest to sever 
official relations. The Secretary of State resigned, 



314 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

and Mr. Randolph, the Attorney-General, was pro- 
moted to the place. After a short service Randolph 
retired, on account of some captured dispatches sent 
by the French minister to his Government, reflecting 
on Randolph's official conduct, and sent by the cap- 
tors to the British minister at Philadelphia. Washing- 
ton offered the portfolio to Thomas Johnson, his old 
partner in the Ohio and Potomac Companies, who 
had nominated him for commander in chief, who 
had been the first State Governor of Maryland, and 
filled the place of Associate Justice of the Supreme 
Court of the United States, until forced to resign by 
ill health. He urged Johnson to accept the duty, for, 
said he, " there has never been a time in which the 
services of tried friends of the Government were as 
much needed as they are now." Johnson, though a 
younger man than Washington by some months, in- 
sisted that his age relieved him from the duty and 
incapacitated him for the labor, and so declined. He 
then invited Patrick Henry to take the place, and 
upon his declining, offered it to Timothy Pickering. 
Pickering, in the Continental Congress, representing 
Massachusetts, had been one of the coterie of which 
the Adamses and James Lovell were members, who 
criticised Washington's " Fabian policy " during the 
war, and who always opposed his recommendations 
for a regular army. He was not, therefore, bound to 
the President by sentimental ties, but he was an able 
man, a sincere patriot, and a convinced Federalist. 
He believed the system of a Federal Union was wise, 
was strong, and could be successfully operated, and 
would serve to maintain liberty. 

Washington had directed Gouverneur Morris, who 
was going to England on private business, to sound 



THE UNION AND THE CONSTITUTION. 



315 



the British Government unofficially as to when the 
surrender of the Western posts might be expected, 
the complete execution of the treaty would be car- 
ried out and ministers interchanged, and as to the 
feasibility of negotiating a commercial treaty. Mor- 
ris made advances, was repelled with indifference 
bordering on insolence, and reported that nothing 
was to be done, except that they would send a min- 
ister to the United States. In due time George 
Hammond arrived, and almost immediately opened 
a spirited correspondence with Mr. Jefferson con- 
cerning Mr. Genet's notorious violation of treaty 
rights by fitting out privateers in American ports to 
prey upon the British. 

The dismissal of Genet got matters into better 
train, and Washington returned to his fixed purpose 
to establish certain relations with Great Britain. If 
she intended to live up to the treaty in good faith he 
intended to know it. If she purposed to use it as 
a cloak to cover designs of future aggression on 
American commerce or the Western country, he in- 
tended to know that. He was clear in his convic- 
tion that the new nation could only vindicate its 
right to live by being ready at all times to defend 
that right by arms. A people that will not fight for 
their rights have none, was his belief. 

The proposition to send Hamilton as minister 
plenipotentiary met with such an acrid opposition 
from the Jeffersonian Democracy that he gave it up, 
and selected John Jay, Chief-Justice of the Supreme 
Court of the United States, a man of ability, spot- 
less character, experience in affairs of learning, 
and thoroughly imbued with the American ideas of 
the President. Jay was a gentleman and an accom- 



3i6 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

plished man of the world, and was received with the 
distinction due to his personal character, his social 
standing, and his official position by the society of 
London. He was presented, and kissed the Queen's 
hand, which was denounced as a grave infraction of 
republican principles by the Jeffersonians. 

He negotiated a treaty which provided for the pay- 
ment by the United States of debts due to British mer- 
chants, as settled by arbitration, for surrender of the 
Western posts on July i, 1796, and that Americans 
should have the right to trade with the West Indies 
on condition that they should not transport the pro- 
ductions of those colonies to Europe. It secured the 
right to trade direct with the colonies of Great 
Britain in the East or the West, but excluded the 
right to participate in the carrying trade between 
those countries, and also between them and Europe. 
The commercial clauses were entirely unsatisfactory 
to the American aspiration for freer trade. They 
felt already the pulsations of the growing vigor 
which will in time make them lords of the seas; and 
the seaboard, from Boston to Charleston, blazed 
with indignant protests against the treaty, and was 
lighted by the burning of John Jay's effigy. 

Washington determined to sign the treaty, as the 
best that could be done at that time, after the Sen- 
ate had ratified it, on condition that the West India 
article should be modified. But before anything 
definite was done, the British Government, with 
British insolence, put its own construction on the 
unratified treaty by ordering the seizure of all ves- 
sels carrying provisions to France or French terri- 
tories and allies. That is, they declared the high seas 
a mare clausum^ to be regulated and used at the will 



THE UNION AND THE CONSTITUTION. 31^7 

of Great Britain. No such storm of popular indigna- 
tion against any public act of public officials has ever 
been raised in the United States as that exhibited 
against Jay's Treaty. 

Public meetings at Boston, at New York, at Balti- 
more, at Richmond — presided over by Chancellor 
Wythe, in Richmond, by Livingston in New York, 
Rodney in Delaware, Christopher Gadsden and the 
Rutledges in South Carolina — all denounced the sale 
of American rights of free trade on the high seas. 
Washington disapproved of the agreement, but it was 
the best that could be done at that time. It settled 
the question of the Western posts and the Western 
country, that was extremely pressing and demanded 
prompt settlement. 

That other question of equal rights for American 
commerce on the high seas, and freer trade with all 
the world, his broad mind knew would settle itself in 
time. If the United States became strong enough to 
maintain its claim to rights by arms, they would be 
conceded; if not, not. And it required another war 
with Great Britain to settle the right, in which the 
military genius of the American race was exhibited 
on land and sea, and the right to a free flag estab- 
lished, never to be questioned by any power which 
shall ever arise in this world. The War of 1812 was 
waged to resist the British claim to the right of 
search and of impressment on the high seas. The 
treaty of 1815 made peace between the belligerents, 
without referring to the casus belli, but the right of 
search and the right of impressment perished under 
the thunder of American guns, and since then has 
been as dead as the first Pharaoh. 

Therefore, content to do what could be done, 



3i8 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

confident that the future could take care of itself, 
immovable by popular clamor and impenetrable to 
popular rage, on August i8, 1795, he signed the Jay 
Treaty. The episode of the Jay Treaty was but an- 
other illustration of the powerful intellect of Wash- 
ington. His indomitable will had been known of all 
men for the preceding twenty years. But the coun- 
try needed peace — rest to grow ; that secured, every- 
thing would be safe. The constant threat from the 
Spaniard and the British was on the Western border. 

At any moment Indian war might break out from 
the Ohio to the Savannah. The counties of Ken- 
tucky and Illinois would at once seize the British 
posts on the lakes and the Spanish garrison at the 
mouth of the Mississippi, and the country be precipi- 
tated into a war with Spain and Great Britain, insti- 
gated by them through their savage agents. He 
therefore took the step to guarantee peace and save 
the Union. Maritime rights must settle themselves 
in time. The creation of a great, large, wide-spread- 
ing Americanism, which would obliterate petty local 
jealousies and provincial narrowness, and would em- 
brace the continent in its patriotism and the illimita- 
ble future in its hope, was the most earnest desire of 
Washington's heart. 

He was the most direct man that ever lived, and 
as clear-sighted. He saw as far and went as straight 
to his object as any statesman of history. But he 
was also gifted with an intuition into character and 
motive which was almost unerring. He never made 
a mistake about men but twice. He sometimes 
did about policies. But his treatment of the Jay 
controversy was an interesting exhibition of sagacity 
and tact. The selectmen of Boston sent him the 



THE UNION AND THE CONSTITUTION. 319 

burning protest of the town meeting against the 
ratification of the treaty. He answered the whole 
proceeding with a phrase. His reply to them is -X 
dated, "United States, 28th of July, 1795." It is 
the only instance in his whole life where he dated 
any paper in this way. But the phrase told the 
whole story: The United States to the town of Bos- 
ton ; the grand, magnificent whole — custodian of the 
happiness, the hopes, the aspirations of untold gen- 
erations yet to be born — to the infinitesimal part, 
about a question of present barter, exchange, and 
trade. That was the thought he presented to the 
world in the date of his letter to Boston. 

Washington had been elected to the presidency a 
second time by the unanimous vote of the electoral 
colleges, and there was a general desire that he should 
serve for a third term. But he felt that he had done 
his duty, and earned his retirement from public life 
and the enjoyment of domestic comfort. In Septem- 
ber, 1796, he issued his farewell address — a paper un- 
equaled in the language for grasp of intellect, for 
patriotic sentiment, and for prophetic forecast. In 
it he set forth the principles which had guided him 
since the definitive Treaty of Peace had established 
the United States. " Be united," he said, " be Ameri- 
cans. . . . Observe justice and good faith toward all 
nations, . . . and be independent politically of all. 
In a word, be a nation, be Americans, and be true 
to yourselves." The "nation" that he exhorted 
them to form was a homogeneous race, controlling 
geographical territory with the same political insti- 
tutions, united by identity of descent, customs, tradi- 
tions and principles. But Washington never dreamed 
of a Nation which would obliterate State lines and 



320 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



local institutions, and reduce the historic States to 
the status of counties. 

He supported the administration of John Adams, 
who succeeded him in 1797 as the lineal successor 
to his policy. Adams sent Charles Cotesworth 
Pinckney, John Marshall, and Elbridge Gerry as 
ministers plenipotentiary to France, to negotiate a 
treaty with the French Republic. The gentlemen of 
the Directory demanded $6,400,000 from the United 
States by way of loan to the Republic, and a bonus 
of $250,000 to the Directory themselves. The Ameri- 
can envoys spurned the demand with spirit. They 
remained in Paris seeking to come to some under- 
standing. The Directory emphasized their view of 
the unreasonableness of the American position by 
passing a decree subjecting to capture neutral ves- 
sels and their cargoes if any portion of such cargoes 
were of British manufacture. As the Americans 
controlled the carrying trade of the world, this was 
equivalent to a confiscation of their commerce. 

Congress promptly authorized the President to 
enlist ten thousand men as a provisional army to be 
called into actual service in case of war. Adams 
nominated Washington to be lieutenant general and 
commander in chief of all the armies raised or to be 
raised, on July 3, 1798, and he was confirmed the next 
day. He was then sixty-six years and five months 
old, a vigorous, hale man. He might have dis- 
charged the duties of commander in chief in the field? 
but the experiment was a doubtful one. He himself 
was of the opinion that the senior generals of the last 
war were too old for active service, and therefore 
selected Alexander Hamilton for inspector general 
and chief of staff, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney and 



THE UNION AND THE CONSTITUTION. 321 

Henry Knox to have the rank of major generals in 
the order named. 

The view which Washington had taken concern- 
ing the old generals was justified, as the exception 
in favor of Knox was not, by the event. Knox re- 
fused to serve under Hamilton and Pinckney, both 
of whom he had ranked in the old army sixteen years 
before. But Pinckney promptly accepted, with the 
offer that, if it would reconcile General Knox, he 
would give up second place to him and take the 
junior rank himself. Early in November, 1798, 
Washington went to Philadelphia to consult with his 
two major generals and the Secretary of War. Five 
weeks were spent on this work, and the result was 
reduced to form by Hamilton, signed by Washing- 
ton, and forwarded to the Secretary of War, James 
McHenry. The organization of the army was per- 
fected on paper. He proposed Alexander Hamil- 
ton, inspector; Charles C. Pinckney, Henry Knox, 
or, if either refuses, Henry Lee, with the rank of 
major generals ; Henry Lee — if not a major general 
— John Brooks, William S. Smith, or John E. Howard, 
brigadiers ; Edward Hand, or Jonathan Dayton, or 
William S. Smith, adjutant general ; Edward Carring- 
ton, quartermaster general ; James Craik, director 
of the hospital. Washington never believed that 
there would be a French invasion. Acting on his life- 
long principle, that the best way to prevent war was 
to be prepared for it, he arranged for the collection 
of his army, its organization and its mobilization. 
The promptness with which the Americans took up 
the glove satisfied the French. Their governors 
were changed, and the new organization opened ne- 
gotiations with the United States for a peaceful set- 



322 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



tlement. John Quincy Adams, then envoy to Paris, 
made an amicable adjustment, and war was averted. 
But Washington did not live to see the restoration 
of peace. At Mount Vernon he was busy, since 
his return from Philadelphia on the expiration of 
his second term, in putting his farms in order, in 
restoring his property, which had been greatly im- 
paired in his twenty years' absence, and in arranging 
his affairs generally. He erected a separate building 
for the safe keeping of his papers, military and civil, 
and employed a gentleman named Rawlins to record 
his vast and extended correspondence. He also 
gave to Tobias Lear, his old comrade and secretary, 
charge of all his papers, and supervised him in ar- 
ranging and docketing them. No stranger of dis- 
tinction came to America without calling at Mount 
Vernon to pay his respects to the greatest character 
of the age, as was the common phrase — " to gratify 
curiosity " was Washington's own word. They were 
invariably invited to stay to dinner and to remain 
overnight. The invitation was always accepted at 
the giving, and the acceptance was the custom of the 
country, and consequently the table of Mount Ver- 
non from year's end to year's end was never without 
guests. As was the custom with all country gentle- 
men, Washington's work of the day was done in the 
morning — the largest part before breakfast, the re- 
mainder before noon. The host rises with the sun 
and rides over the plantation in early morning, to see 
that the machinery has been properly started and is 
working smoothly. The guests meet first at breakfast. 
That was and is the custom at Virginian country 
houses on great estates. It prevails to-day at West- 
over, just as it did at Belvoir before the war, and at 



THE UNION AND THE CONSTITUTION. 



323 



Mount Vernon after the master had returned. The 
morning of December 12, 1799, was overcast and 
cloudy. He rode out as usual to make the rounds 
of his farms and look after his servants and his 
stock. By midday a light, powdery snow began to 
fall, which soon changed into a cold, drizzling rain, 
penetrating the clothes and pervading the lungs — 
such a rain as is usual in the Chesapeake region at 
that time of year. After being out two hours he 
came in, and declined to change his clothes, for he 
said they were dry, and had protected him perfectly. 
The next day he went out again, and that night he 
was taken with an acute sore throat — acute oedema- 
tous laryngitis is now known to be the scientific 
designation of it. Dr. James Craik, his comrade, 
friend, and medical adviser, was called in, who ar- 
rived with two other physicians. They bled him 
and administered calomel, and he died the next day. 
The medical treatment has been greatly criticised as 
ignorant, barbarous, and the cause of his death. It 
seems that this criticism is unjust, and the highest 
authorities as specialists on diseases of the throat 
of the present day say that the science and skill of 
Washington's medical attendants were fully up to the 
standard of medical knowledge in Virginia and in 
America at that day. At this time the case would 
be conducted differently, but it was treated with the 
best knowledge that any one had at that time. He 
had directed Colonel Lear that his body should not 
be placed in the vault for three days after his death, 
and the funeral took place on the i8th of December, 
1799. It was attended by the militia. Free Masons 
and corporation of Alexandria, and his many friends 
from the neighborhood. 
22 



324 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



The world stood uncovered out of respect for the 
illustrious dead, and America mourned him as her 
best-beloved son. He was the first, as he is still the 
greatest, American. The Congress wore black dur- 
ing the session. When the news of his death reached 
England, Lord Bridport, who commanded sixty sail 
of the line lying at Torbay, lowered his flag half 
mast, every ship doing the same; and the First Con- 
sul of France, Napoleon Bonaparte, in announcing 
his death to the army in a general order, directed 
that all the flags and standards of the armies of 
France and service of the Republic should be draped 
in crape for ten days. 



APPENDIX. 



General Charles Lee was captured by a patrol of 
thirty dragoons of Burgoyne's Regiment of Queen's Light 
Dragoons (Sixteenth Regiment), commanded by Lieutenant- 
Colonel Harcourt, after\vard Earl Harcourt. Banastre Tar- 
leton was in charge of the advance of six men. Lee's party 
and guard fired on the British horse, and several men 
were killed or wounded, but Lee surrendered at once, and, 
as all accounts agree, in the most pusillanimous manner. 
He was considered a deserter in the British army, and he 
was doubtful if his surrender would be accepted. Sir Wil- 
liam Howe without doubt preferred to hang him, and only 
Washington's firmness and Howe's law doubts gave Lee 
reprieve until he could make his proposals for treachery. 
The original paper in Lee's handwriting, found among the 
papers of Sir Henry Strachey, endorsed " Mr. Lee's plan, 29th 
March, 1777," has been sold at auction in New York since 
this work went to press. It belonged to the estate of George 
H. Moore, formerly Librarian of the New York Historical 
Society, who published the evidence then known in the case 
under the title, " The Treason of Charles Lee, Major General, 
Second in Command in the American Army of the Revolu- 
tion " (New York, i860), in which is reproduced in facsimile 
the autograph "Plan of Mr. Lee." Mr. Lee's plan certainly 
was adopted by General Howe in part, and in his move- 
ment on Philadelphia, but more curious still, it seems to have 
been the plan of the War Office of the British Government in 
the War of i8i2-'i4 for the occupation of the line of the Po- 



326 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

tomac and the Chesapeake by the capture of Washington and 
Baltimore. 

"Mr. Lee's Plan — 29TH March, 1777. 

"As on the one hand it appears to me that by the con- 
tinuance of the War America has no chance of obtaining 
the ends She proposes to herself; that altho by struggling 
She may put the Mother Country to very serious expence 
both in blood and Money, yet She must in the end, after 
great desolation, havock and slaughter, be reduc'd to submit 
to terms much harder than might probably be granted at 
present — and as on the other hand Great Britain tho' 
ultimately victorious, must suffer very heavily even in the 
process of her victories, eveiy life lost and every guinea spent 
being in fact worse than thrown away : it is only wasting her 
own property, shedding her own blood and destroying her 
own strength ; and as I am not only persuaded from the high 
opinion I have of the humanity and good sense of Lord and 
General Howe that the terms of accommodation will be as 
moderate as their powers will admit, but that their powers 
are more ample than their Successors (shou'd any accident 
happen) wou'd be vested with, I think myself not only justi- 
fiable but bound in conscience to furnish all the lights, I can, 
to enable 'em to bring matters to a conclusion in the most 
compendious manner and consequently the least expensive to 
both Parties — 1 do this with the more readiness as I know 
the most generous use will be made of it in all respects — their 
humanity will incline 'em to have consideration for Indi- 
viduals who have acted from Principle and theif good sense 
will tell 'em that the more moderate are the general condi- 
tions ; the more solid and permanent wdll be the union for if 
the conditions were extremely repugnant to the general way 
of thinking, it would be only the mere patchwork of a day 
which the first breath of wind will discompose and the first 
symptoms of a rupture betwixt the Bourbon Powers and Great 
Britain absolutely overturn — but I really have no apprehensions 
of this kind whilst Lord and General Howe have the direction 
of affairs, and flatter myself that under their auspices an ac- 



m 



APPENDIX. ^27 

commodation may be built on so solid a foundation as not to 
be shaken by any such incident— in this persuasion and on 
these principles I shall most sincerely and zealously contrib- 
ute all in my power to so desirable an end, and if no unto- 
ward accidents fall out which no human foresight can guard 
against I will answer with my life for the success. 

"From my present situation and ignorance of certain 
facts I am sensible that I hazard proposing things which can- 
not without difficulties be comply 'd with; I can only act 
from surmise, therefore hope allowances will be made for my 
circumstances. I will suppose then that (exclusive of the 
Troops requisite for the security of Rhode Island and N. 
York) General Howe's Army (comprehending every species, 
British, Hessians and Provincials) amounts to twenty thou- 
shand men capable to take the field and act offensively ; by 
which I mean to move to any part of the Continent where 
occasion requires— I will suppose that the General's design 
with this force is to clear the Jersey's and take possession of 
Philadelphia— but in my opinion the taking possession of 
Philadelphia will not have any decisive consequences— the 
Congress and People adhering to the Congress have already 
made up their minds for the event; already They have'turn'd 
their eyes to other places where They can fix their seat of 
residence, carry on in some measure their Government ; in 
short expecting this event They have devis'd measures for pro- 
tracting the War in hopes of some favourable turn of afTairs 
m Europe— the taking possession therefore of Philadelphia 
or any or two Towns more, which the General may have in 
view, will not be decisive— to bring matters to a conclusion, it 
IS necessary to unhinge or dissolve, if I may so express my- 
self, the whole system or machine of resistance, or in other 
terms, Congress Government— this system or machine, as 
affairs now stand, depends entirely on the circumstances and 
disposition of the People of Maryland Virginia and Pennsyl- 
vania—if the Province of Maryland or the greater part of it is 
reduc'd or submits, and the People of Virginia are prevented 
or intimidated from marching aid to the Pennsylvania Army 
the whole machine is dissolv'd and a period put to the War, 



328 GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

to accomplish which, is, the object of the scheme which I now 
take the hberty of offering to the consideration of his Lordship 
and the General, and if it is adopted in full I am so confident 
of the success that I wou'd stake my life on the issue — I have 
at the same time the comfort to reflect, that in pointing out 
measures which I know to be the most effectual I point out 
those which will be attended with no bloodshed or desolation 
to the Colonies. As the difficulty of passing and of re-pass- 
ing the North River and the apprehensions from General 
Carleton's Army will I am confident keep the New Engend- 
ers at home, or at least confine 'em to the East side the 
River ; and as their Provinces are at present neither the seat of 
Government strength nor Politicks I cannot see that any of- 
fensive operations against these Provinces wou'd answer any 
sort of Purpose — to secure N. York and Rhode Island 
against their attacks will be sufficient. On the supposition 
then, that General Howe's Army (including every species of 
Troops) amounts to twenty or even eighteen thoushand men at 
liberty to move to any part of the Continent; as fourteen 
thoushand will be more than sufficient to clear the Jersey's 
and take possession of Philadelphia, I wou'd propose that 
four thoushand men be immediately embark'd in transports, 
one half of which shou'd proceed up the Patomac and take 
post at Alexandria, the other half up Chesepeak Bay and 
possess themselves of Annapolis. They will most probably 
meet with no opposition in taking possession of these Posts, 
and when possess'd they are so very strong by nature that a 
few hours work and some trifling artillery will secure them 
against the attacks of a much greater force than can possibly 
be brought down against them — their communication with 
the shipping will be constant and sure— for at Alexandria 
Vessels of a very considerable burthen (of five or six hundred 
Tons for instance) can lie in close to the shore, and at Annapo- 
lis within musket shot — all the necessaries and refreshments 
for an Army are near at hand, and in the greatest abundance — 
Kent Island will supply that of Annapolis and every part on 
both banks of the Patomac that of Alexandria. These Posts 
may with ease support each other, as it is but two easy days 



APPENDIX. 



329 



march from one to the other, and if occasion requires by a 
single days march, They may join * and conjunctly carry on 
their operations wherever it shall be thought eligible to direct 
'em ; whether to take possession of Baltimore or post them- 
selves on some spot on the Westward bank of the Susque- 
hanna which is a point of the utmost importance — but here I 
must beg leave to observe that there is a measure which if 
the General assents to and adopts will be attended with mo- 
mentous and the most happy consequences — I mean that 
from these Posts proclamations of pardon shou'd be issued to 
all those who come in at a given day, and I will answer for it 
with my life — that all the Inhabitants of that great tract south- 
ward of the Patapsico and lying betwixt the Patomac and 
Chesepeak Bay and those on the eastern Shore of Maryland 
will immediately lay down their arms — but this is not all, I 
am much mistaken if those potent and populous German dis- 
tricts, Frederic County in Maryland and York in Pennsyl- 
vania do not follow their example — These Germans are ex- 
tremely numerous, and to a Man have hitherto been the 
most staunch Assertors of the American cause ; but at the 
same time are so remarkably tenacious of their property and 
apprehensive of the least injury being done to their fine farms 
that I have no doubt when They see a probability of their 
Country becoming the seat of War They will give up all 
opposition but if contrary to my expectations a force should 
be assembled at Alexandria sufficient to prevent the Corps 
detach'd thither from taking possession immediately of the 
place, it will make no disadvantageous alteration, but rather 
the reverse — a variety of spots near Alexandria on either bank 
of the Patomac may be chosen for Posts equally well calcu- 
lated for all the great purposes I have mention'd — viz — for 

" * On the Road from Annapolis to Queen Anne there is one 
considerable River to be. pass'd, but as the ships boats can easily 
be brought round from the Bay to the usual place of passage or 
Ferry, this is no impediment if the Two Corps chuse to unite 
They may by a single days march either at Queen Annes or 
Marlborough." 



330 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



the reduction or compulsion to submission of the whole Prov- 
ince of Maryland for the preventing or intimidating Virginia 
from sending aids to Pennsylvania — for in fact if any force is 
assembled at Alexandria sufficient to oppose the Troops sent 
against it, getting possession of it, it must be at the expence 
of the more Northern Army, as they must be compos'd of 
those Troops v^hich were otherwise destin'd for Pennsylvania 
— to say all in a word, it will unhinge and dissolve the whole 
system of defence. I am so confident of the event that I will 
venture to assert with the penalty of my life if the plan is 
fully adopted, and no accidents (such as a rupture betwixt 
the Powers of Europe) intervenes that in less than two 
months from the date of the proclamation not a spark of this 
desolating war remains unextinguished in any part of the 
Continent." 






INDEX 



Accounts of Washington set- 
tled, 276. 

Adams, John, gg, loi. 

Adams, John Quincy, 322. 

Adams, Samuel, g4, 102, 125. 

Admiralty courts, 87, 88, 8g. 

Admiralty jurisdiction, gi, g3. 

Aix la Chapelle, Treaty of, 35. 

Alamance, battle of, 64. 

Albany, congress at, 80. 

Alexander, Sir William, 35. 

Allerton, Major, 5. 

Alliance, The French, 193 ; dis- 
tasteful to Washington, 193, 
ig4 ; entered into, 195. 

Americanism of Washington, 
299 ; his opinion of, 319. 

Amherst, General, 120. 

Andre captured ; tried by court- 
martial ; Lafayette on the 
court ; found guilty of being 
a spy, and executed as a spy, 
229, 230. 

Annapolis, Washington resigns 
his commission at, 278. 

Arnold, Benedict, 109 ; at Sara- 
toga, 178 ; badly treated by 
Congress, 218 ; put in com- 
mand of Philadelphia, 2ig ; 



marries Miss Shippen, 223 ; 
passed over by Congress 
in promotion, 222 ; charges 
against, preferred by Reed, 
222 ; intrigue with Andre, 
225 ; found guilty and sen- 
tenced to be reprimanded in 
orders, 226 ; assigned to com- 
mand West Point ; arranges 
to sell the post to Sir Henry 
Clinton, 227. 
Assistance, writ of, go. 

Ball, Mary, her family and edu- 
cation, g. 

Bayard, John, I5g. 

Beaujeu, De, 4g. 

Berkeley, Sir William, investi- 
gates massacre at Piscata- 
way, 7. 

Board of War, 185. 

Boston port bill, g8 ; massacre, 
g8 ; evacuated, 117. 

Braddock, Major-General Ed- 
ward, 39 ; his council of war, 
3g ; appoints Washington aid- 
de-camp, 41 ; marches from 
Cumberland, 46 ; killed, 54. 

Brandywine, battle of, 164. 



332 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



Brooklyn Heights, battle of, 141. 

Brooks, John, brigadier gen- 
eral, 321. 

Burgoyne, Sir John, 146 ; his 
surrender, 178. 

Byrd, Colonel William, 18. 



Cadwalader, John, 159. 

Camden, battle of, 243. 

Carleton, General Sir Guy, 121, 
145, 272. 

Carrington, Edward, quarter- 
master general, 321. 

Carroll, Charles, of Carrollton, 

95. 

Carroll, John, Provincial of the 
Society of Jesus, loi. 

Carter, Landon, 161. 

Caswell, Richard, 95 ; defeats 
McDonald, 118. 

Cavalier theory of life, 137. 

Champlain, line of Lake, 120. 

Charles II, King of Maryland, 
62. 

Chatham, Earl of, 123. 

Clark, George Rogers, 209 ; 
conquers the Northwest, 210. 

Clinton, George, Governor of 
New York, 182. 

Clinton, Sir HeJiry, 121, 139, 
140 ; succeeds Sir William 
Howe in command, 195 ; at- 
tacks Savannah, 241 ; captures 
Charleston, 241. 

Confederation impossible until 
Virginia gave up the Western 
lands, 245 ; reasons why, 245, 
246 ; weakness of, 285. 

Congress at Albany, 80 ; at New 



York, 82 ; at Philadelphia, 

77. 

"Congress's Own," ill, 285. 

Connecticut regiments, panic of, 
142. 

Conococheague, 44. 

Constitution, Washington's in- 
fluence in framing it and hav- 
ing it adopted, 297, 298. 

Continental Congress called, 77 ; 
corruption of, 183. 

Contrecoeur, 29-32. 

Convention at Annapolis, 295 ; 
at Philadelphia, 295. 

Conway cabal, 188, 189 ; Cad- 
walader fights Conway about 
it, 191 ; Washington's letter 
to Conway, 189. 

Cornwallis, Lord, 146, 155 ; in 
the South, 237, 239, 240 ; in 
Virginia, 250 ; at York, 
252. 

County committees, 76. 

Craik, James, director of the 
hospital, 321. 

Cresap, Michael, 109. 

Crown Point captured, no. 

Cumberland, 30-42. 



Dayton, Jonathan A. G., 321. 

De Barras, 254. 

De Choise, 254. 

D'Estaing, Count, 214. 

De Fersen's description of Wash- 
ington, 248. 

De Grasse, 251, 252, 254, 

De Guichen, 249. 

De Kalb commands Maryland 
and Delaware line, 242. 



INDEX. 



333 



Democrats, Mrs. Washington 

and the, 310, 
De Rochambeau arrives, 236 ; 

arrives with an army and a 

fleet, 247. 
Dictator, Washington made, 156, 

171. 
Dinner napkins at Braddock's 

rout, 51. 
Dinwiddie, Lieutenant-Govern- 
or, 27. 
Dispatch of Howe's captured, 

162. 
Dorchester Heights occupied, 

116. 
Dunbar, Colonel, Forty-eighth 

Regiment, 46. 
Dunmore, Lord, 1 18-124. 

Fairfax, Anne, marries Law- 
rence Washington, 16. 
Fairfax, Lord, 19. 
Fairfax resolutions, 76. 
First City Troop, 106. 
Flag, first Continental, 107. 
Florida, Blanca proposes peace, 

244. 
France, colonies to supply men 

and money for war with, 37. 
Franklin, Benjamin, threatens 

the Pennsylvanians with " The 

Hussars," 44. 
Fraunce's Tavern, Washington 

takes leave of his officers at 

276. 
Frazier, Lieutenant, 29. 
Frederick, County Court of, re- 
pudiates stamp act, 65. 
French as allies, not as leaders, 



232 ; depredations on Amer- 
ican commerce, 320. 
Fry, Colonel, 27, 28. 

Gadsden, Christopher, 95-101. 

Gage, Lieutenant-Colonel, 46, 
47 ; at Boston, 98 ; evacuates, 
117. 

Gates, General Horatio, 156 ; 
assigned to the Army of the 
North, 176 ; member Board of 
War, 186 ; president Board of 
War, 186 ; assigned to com- 
mand in the South, 242. 

Genet, French minister, issues 
letters of marque, 307 ; prog- 
ress through the country, 307 ; 
fits out La Petite Democrat 
and sends her to sea, 308 ; re- 
called, 310. 

Germaine, Lord George, cen- 
sures the British generals, 

195. 
Germantown, battle of, 168. 
Gerry, Elbridge, sent to France, 

320. 
Gimat, Major, 257. 
Graves, Admiral, 254, 255. 
Grayson at Monmouth, 201. 
Great Bridge, battle of, 118. 
Greene, Nathanael, 109, 161 ; 

quartermaster general, 192; at 

Monmouth, 202 ; sent South, 

237. 

Halkett, Colonel Sir Peter, of 
44th, 43; killed, 57; brigade 
major, killed, 57. 

Hancock, John, 183. 



334 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



Hand, Edward, adjutant gen- 
eral, 321. 
Hamilton, Alexander, sent to 

Gates, 179 ; at Yorktown, 256 ; 

Secretary of Treasury, 300 ; 

Chief of Staff and Inspector 

General, 320. 
Hazen's Canadian regiment, 

252. 
Heath, General, at West Point, 

252. 
Henry's, Patrick, defiance, 86 ; 

Governor of Virginia, 182 ; 

the Conway cabal, 189. 
Hillsborough, Gates at, 242. 
Hobby, William, 13. 
Howard, John E., brigadier 

general, 321. 
Howe, Lord, 114. 
Howe, Sir William, 114 ; sails 

from New York, 162 ; returns 

to England to defend himself 

against Lord George Ger- 

maine's attacks, 195. 
Hunting Creek, Mount Vernon, 

II, 12. 



Illinois, County of, 210, 245. 
Independence, movement to- 

wai-d, 118. 
Irving, Washington, viii. 

Jacobitism on the Chesapeake, 
61. 

Jay, John, 183 ; Chief Justice, 
315 ; minister to England, 
315 ; negotiates a treaty, 316; 
treaty denounced, 317 ; Wash- 
ington signs it, 318. 



Jefferson, Governor of Virginia, 
246 ; Secretary of State, 300. 

Johnson, Thomas, father, a 
Jacobite, 61 ; nominated 
Washington, 95, 101-104 ; 
Governor of Maryland, 182 ; 
Secretary of State, 314. 

Jumonville killed, 31. 

Jury, trial by, 87. 

Kentucky, County of, 300. 

Knox, Henry, 109, 161 ; Secre- 
tary of War, 300 ; refuses to 
serve as major general, 321. 

Lafayette goes to France for 
Washington, 235, 247. 

Langlade's, Charles de, French 
account of Braddock's defeat, 
48. 

Laurens, Henry, 268. 

Laurens, John, President of 
Congress, 189. 

Lear, Tobias, secretary, 322. 

Lee, Henry, major, captures 
Paulus Hook, 236 ; his legion 
sent South, 250 ; major gen- 
eral, 321. 

Lee, Major-General Charles, 
106-114, 147, 156, 198 ; his 
capture, 148 ; " plan " of, 148, 
vide Appendix, 325 ; treason 
of, 199 ; at Monmouth, 202 ; 
court-martialed and found 
guilty, 204 ; dismissed from 
the army by Congress, 204 ; 
fights Colonel John Laurens, 
aid-de-camp to Washington, 
205. 

Lee, R. H., 95 ; moves for in- 



INDEX. 



335 



dependence, 130 ; friendship 

for Washington, 235. 
Light Horse, troop of, 158. 
Lincoln, General Benjamin, 161 ; 

loses Charleston, 236. 
Littlepage, Colonel Lewis, 18. 
Lovell, James, 189. 
Lowland beauty, 67. 

Manifest destiny, log. 

Marshall, Chief-Justice, viii ; 
sent to France, 320. 

Maryland in the Revolution, 
127 ; declares independence, 
130 ; line at Camden, 243 ; 
joins the confederation, 286. 

Mason's, George, ancestor a 
Jacobite, 61 ; friendship for 
Washington, 75 ; opposed to 
disunion, 94. 

McDonald, Donald, defeated, 
118. 

McDowell, plan of the first bat- 
tle of Manassas, 212. 

McHenry, James, Secretary of 
War, 321. 

Meadows, Great, 31. 

Meadows, Little, 30. 

Mecklenburg declares inde- 
pendence, 128. 

Meeting of officers of the army, 

273. 

Mercer, Hugh, General, 57 ; 
killed, 154. 

Mifflin, quartermaster general 
and President Board of War, 
185. 

Monmouth, Court-House, bat- 
tle of, 200. 

Monongahela, battle of, 47. 



Montgomery, Richard, 110,208. 
Montreal captured, no. 
Moore's Creek, battle of, 118. 
Morgan, Daniel, 109, 163, 238. 
Morgan, Jacob, 159. 
Morris, Gouverneur, 314. 
Morris, Robert, 268. 
Moultrie, William, 139. 
Mount Vernon, 12. 
Murray, Mrs., lunches Sir Wil- 
liam Howe, 142. 
Muse, Battaille, 23. 
Mutiny in 1778-79, 234. 

Necessity, Fort, useless, 31 ; 
surrender of, 33. 

Neutrality, proclamation of, 306. 

New England, the rising of, 
176. 

Newport occupied, 215 ; Sulli- 
van's attack on, 215 ; failure 
of French co-operation at, 215. 

New York, Congress at, 82. 

Nicola, Colonel Lewis, 271. 

O'Hara, General, surrenders the 
British army at Yorktown, 
262. 

Otis, James, 99. 

Oxford, Virginians at, 13. 

Pakenham, Sir Edward M., ix. 
Paris, Treaty of, 58. 
Parke, Colonel John, 18. 
Parker, Sir Peter, 140. 
Patton at Monmouth, 20. 
Paulus Hook, Henry Lee cap- 
tures, 236. 
Peace, treaty of, 275 ; pro- 



336 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



claimed in general orders, 

275. 

Peters, Richard, on Board of 
War, 186. 

Philadelphia occupied, 167 ; 
evacuation of, 195. 

Pickering, Timothy, Board of 
War, 186. 

Pinckney, Charles Cotesworth, 
95 ; sent to France, 320 ; ma- 
jor general, 321. 

Pinckney, Thomas, negotiates 
treaty with Spain, 310. 

Piscataway, massacre at, 5. 

Pope, Anne, marries John Wash- 
ington, 9. 

Potomac Company, 289, 292 ; 
compact, 291, 293. 

Prescott, Edward, 2. 

Princeton, battle of, 154. 

Pulaski killed at Savannah, 241. 

Puritan theory of life, 136. 

Putnam, Israel, 109. 

Quebec Act offensive to the 
colonies, loi, 209. 

Rahl attacks White Plains, 143. 

Ramsay, Nathaniel, at Mon- 
mouth, 201. 

Randolph, Edmund, member of 
Congress, loi ; attorney gen- 
eral, 300. 

Randolph, Peyton, President of 
Congress, 100. 

Randolph's, Sir John, forged 
Washington letters, 185. 

Rebellion, status of, 119. 

Rebels defined by Washington, 
113- 



Rhode Island captures the Gas- 

pe, 64. 
Roman Catholics, hatred of, 37, 

58, 59- 
Rush's, Benjamin, anonymous 

letter to Patrick Henry and 

Laurens, 189. 
Rutledge, John, 139. 

St. Clair, Sir John, 42-57. 

St. Simon, Marquis de, 254. 

Self-defense, right of, 206. 

Shako of British grenadier ruin- 
ous, 42. 

Shay's rebellion, 302. 

Shirley, William, killed, 57. 

Smith, William S., brigadier 
general, 321. 

Smuggling in New England, 60. 

Stamp Act, 79, 85 ; repudiated 
in Maryland, 165 ; and in 
South Carolina, 89. 

Stamp officer for Maryland a 
fugitive, 89. 

Stark, John, 109. 

Stedman's opinion of Washing- 
ton, 155. 

Stephen, General Adam, 161. 

Steuben, Von, drills the army, 
196. 

Stirling, Lord, 141-161, 252 ; 
at Monmouth, 202. 

Stony Point, Wayne captures, 
236. 

Strategy of the war, 134 ; of the 
Revolution, 207, 210, 211. 

Sullivan, General John, 161, 170; 
quarrels with the French at 
Newport, 231. 



INDEX. 



337 



Tarleton, Colonel Bannastre, 
241 ; raid to Charlottesville, 
251. 

Tax on tea, 94, 96 ; thrown over- 
board at Boston, 97 ; vessel 
with tea, the Peggy Stewart, 
burned at Annapolis, 97. 

Taxation without representa- 
tion, 63, 64. 

Ticonderoga captured, 110. 

Tilghman, Mathew, loi. 

Tilghman, Tench — his ride, car- 
rying the news to Congress, 
263. 

Tories, the, 224 ; in the Middle 
States and the South, 288-311. 

Treasons, Statute of, 87. 

Trent, Captain, 29. 

Trenton, surprise of, 151 ; sec- 
ond battle of, 151. 

Truman, Major, trial of, 7. 

Trumbull, Jonathan, 157. 

Trumbull, Joseph, ex-Commis- 
sary-General on Board of 
War, 186. 

Union, projects for, 80 ; neces- 
sity for, 81, 82 ; Washington 
moves for, 296 ; necessity for, 
313. 

Valley Forge, 182 ; troops at, 
182. 

Van Braam, Jacob, 23, 33. 

Varnum, of Rhode Island, 180. 

Venango, 26. 

Vergennes declines to co-operate 
with Florida Blanca in forc- 
ing peace on the basis of the 
uti possidetis^ 244. 



Viomenil, Baron de, 254 ; at 

Yorktown, 258. 
Virginia club at Edinburgh, 18. 
Virginia proposes independence, 

130. 
Virginians, extravagance of, 17 ; 

culture of, 18. 

Wadsv/orth, Jeremiah, commis- 
sary general, 192. 

Ward, General Artemas, 114, 
183. 

Washington, Augustine, marries 
Jane Butler and Mary Ball, 
9-10. 

Washington, Fort, capture of, 
144. 

Washington, George, bom, 10 ; 
a typical Virginian, 19 ; sur- 
veyor for Lord Fairfax, 21 ; 
county surveyor, 22 ; goes to 
Barbadoes, 22 ; assistant ad- 
jutant general Northern Dis- 
trict of Virginia, 23 ; envoy to 
Indians on the Ohio, 25 ; pro- 
moted lieutenant colonel, 27; 
attacks and kills Jumonville, 
31 ; resigns, 38 ; aid-de-camp 
to Braddock as captain, 41 ; 
conduct in battle, 54 ; rides 
to bring up Dunbar, 55 ; mar- 
ries Martha Dandridge Custis, 
69 ; as vestryman, 74 ; dele- 
gate to Congress, 77 ; appoint- 
ed commander in chief, 105 ; 
marches the army to New 
York, 122 ; favors independ- 
ence, 132 ; as a letter-writer, 
139 ; evacuates Long Island, 
141 ; resigns his commission, 



338 



GENERAL WASHINGTON. 



267 ; president of the Consti- 
tutional Convention, 295 ; his 
influence there, 296 ; Presi- 
dent, 298 ; Adams appoints 
him lieutenant general and 
commander in chief, 320 ; 
death of, 323. 

"Washington, John, 2. 

Washington, Lawrence, marries 
Mildred Warner, 9. 

Washington, Lawrence, marries 
Anne Fairfax, 11. 

Washington, Mary Ball, man- 
agement of her children and 
their estates, 12. 

Washingtons of Virginia, the, i. 

Wayne goes to Virginia, 250. 

Wellington, Duke of, ix. 

Western lands, value of, 207. 

Wharton, President of Pennsyl- 
vania, 180, 

Whisky insurrection, 303. 

White Plains, battle of, 143. 



Wilkinson, James, chief of staff 
for Gates, 187 ; carries report 
of Burgoyne's surrender to 
Congress, 187 ; tells Stirling's 
staff that the Board of War was 
going to supersede Washing- 
ton with Gates, 188 ; tells of 
Conway's letter to Gates, 
188. 

Williams, Thomas, 14. 

Wills Creek, 28. 

Wilson, James Grant, ix-x. 

Witch trial by Prescott, 3. 

Yorktown, in Virginia — Corn- 
wallis reaches there, 252 ; Con- 
tinental troops there, 252 ; 
French troops there, 252; army 
marches to, 252 ; De Grasse 
re-enforces Lafayette there, 
254 ; troops at, 256 ; siege of, 
256 ; assault at, 256 ; capitula- 
tion of, 261, 262. 



THE END. 



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